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A STUDY 

IN SHIRLEY'S COMEDIES OF 

LONDON LIFE 



D D D 



—BY- 
HANSON irpARLIN 



D D D 



THESIS PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE 
SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA IN PARTIAL FUL- 
FILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH D. 






/xl 



■^.N^'" 
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Reprint from the 

Bulletin of the University of Texas 

No. 371, November 15, 1914. 



p ' „/ ^ 



:> 



PEEFACE 



The present study in Shirley's comedies of London life orig- 
inally formed the introduction to a complete edition of the play 
entitled The Ball, a work presented to the Graduate Faculty of 
the University of Pennsylvania in fulfillment of the requirements 
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The entire work was to 
have appeared shortly as a Bulletin of the University of Texas; 
and was already in press, when a new edition of The Ball made 
its appearance in a collection of Chapman's comedies* lately 
edited by Professor Parrott of Princeton University. In view of 
a recent and satisfactory edition of The Ball, it hardly seemed 
advisable to duplicate work on so unimportant a play, and for this 
reason the text and accompanying notes of the present writer's 
edition have been suppressed, and the introductory matter allowed 
to issue in what must necessarily seem a fragmentary form. It is 
to be hoped that what is here printed may not seem superfluous. 
Professor Parrott and I have covered much the same ground in 
discussing the authorship of the play and have arrived at the same 
conclusions; my study has been made, however, from the point of 
view of Shirley rather than from that of Chapman, which is Pro- 
fessor Parrotfs liiie of approach. 

The unusual form of the present study, due as above noted to a 
change of purpose in the course of printing, deserves some brief 
comment. A few facts are, therefore, given here, in explanation 
of what may seem a partial and ununified treatment of Shirley 
and his play The Ball. 

James Shirley is well known to special students of the Eliza- 
bethan drama, and with the increasing study of the literature of 
his time has become familiar to many general readers. With Mas- 
singer he shares -the reputation of having left the longest and 
most creditable list of plays written by one man during the reign 
of the first Charles. Among these plays is The Ball, a light com- 
edy in defense of a fashionable fad, written by Shirley at a time 
when he was more familiar with London's exclusive social circles 

*The PJai/s and Poems of George Chapman: The Comedies, ed. by T. M. 
Parrott, London. 1914. 



ii Preface 

than was any other dramatist then writing for tlie public stage. 
Although The Ball has the interest of an authentic picture of con- 
temporary manners, it has not a high intrinsic value, nor is it one 
of Shirley's best plays. It is mainly interesting to the lover of 
our old drama from the fact that on the title-page of the first 
edition Shirley's name is linked with that of George Chapman. 
The question of the authorship of The Ball is given added impor- 
tance by the further fact that the two dramatists are again joined 
as collaborators on the title-page of Chahot, Admiral of France, a 
tragedy quite as much in the jjonderous style of Chapman as The 
Ball is in the lighter vein of Shirley's comedy of manners. In 
1633, when The Ball was first presented, Chapman, a noble old 
poet of Elizabeth's day long past his active career, had come to 
comparative obscurity. Shirley, on the other hand, was a rising 
young playwright just brightening into full professional fame. 
The suggestion of collaboration between these two men at once 
stimulates the curiosity of a student of the Elizabethan drama, 
and must form an important problem in any consideration of The 
Ball or the tragedy of Chahot. 

In investigating the facts concerning the comedy entitled The 
Ball preparatory to an edition of the play, I soon reached the con- 
clusion that the main point upon which any new light could be shed 
was that of the authorship of the ])hiy, although there was always a 
tentative hope that in the course of general reading some corrob- 
orative account of the so-called "Ijall" might be discovered. As 
the play was founded upon a bit of contemporary social scandal, 
the question of sources proved negligible ; and the dates of compo- 
sition and ])ul)lication are seeminglv indisputable. The problem 
of the text is greatly simplified by the fact that there is only one 
original edition. To these matters, then, I have only given inci- 
dental treatment in the following monograph ; and have endeav- 
ored to exclude all matter that does not in some way contribute to 
a settlement of the authorship, with the exception of a ^e-w pages 
of conjecture as to the nature of the amusement called the "ball." 

As it now stands,, my work upon Shirley and the play of The 
Ball is composed of three parts: a section on Shirley as a poet and 
plavAvright, with a special inquiry into his comedies on London 
life; a section on Chapman's practice in comedy; and a section 
devoted almost exclusively to a discussion of the authorship of the 



Preface iii 

play. Any settlement of the question of the collaboration of Shir- 
ley and Chapman must depend upon internal evidence. For this 
reason I have placed the results of my study of the two poets before 
the argument in regard to their collaboration in The Ball. The sec- 
tion on Shirley is longer and more comprehensive than that of Chap- 
man. My reason for this is twofold : in the first place, Shirley is 
according to my view sole author of The Ball, and would thus war- 
rant ampler treatment; in the second place, his contemporary and 
historical importance seemed to require a lengthened discussion of 
his work and talents. Shirley is not so favoral^ly known as he 
should be. In nearly every treatment of the Caroline period, Mas- 
singer and Ford are mentioned as the representative dramatists. 
My study has led me to l^elieve that, while Massinger may equal 
Shirley as a dramatic craftsman, he does not rank with him as a 
poet; and that Ford, while excelling Shirley at times in tragic 
power and lyrical beauty, falls short of him in compreliensive 
practice; and that neither Massinger nor Ford has a better claim 
than Shirley to be ranked as the representative dramatist of the 
time. 

In the preparation of this slight monograph and the vicissi- 
tudes incident to its publication, I am deeply indebted to the help- 
ful criticism and the patient kindness of Professor Felix E. 
Schelling of the University of Pennsylvania. In the work of get- 
ting it through the press, it would be hard for me to express what 
I owe to my friends Professor Ivillis Campbell and Mr. E. W. 
Fowler of the University of Texas. 

H. T. P. 

June, 1914. 



SHIRLEY AS A POET AXD PLAYWEIGHT 



Since Anthony a Wood gathered together the few surviving 
facts of Shirley's life, little has been discovered to add to his 
meagre account.^ A diligent search of contemporary documents 
and a careful culling of the dedications and jn'ologues of his plays 
have yielded nothing that would give more than a deeper color of 
truth to what was first brought together by the author of Athenae 
Oxonienses. But we know Shirley's stoiy in its main and im- 
portant points. We know that he rose rapidly from an obscure 
position as master of a small school at St. Albans to a conspicuous 
place as a London playwright, and that chance having brushed 
away his nearest competitors, he succeeded finally to the premier- 
ship of his profession. He took his place at the head of the im- 
portant company of the King's men about 1640. He was then in 
the very prime of his manhood, and his art had been chastened 
and developed by a long and prolific practice. A bright future 
seemed to lie before him, but in less than two years the theaters 
were closed by order of a Puritan parliament. In the case of 
Shirle}', however, we are not troubled l)y the regret that we feel in 
the case of some other poets of unfulfilled renown. It is clear to 
a student of his work that, variously and genuinely gifted as Shir- 
ley was, he had brought his art to full development in the plays 
that he has bequeathed to us. And any speculation as to what he 
might have accomplished in his maturer years is finall}'^ closed in 
retrospect by the fact that the end of a great age was at hand, and 
the birth of a new in all the toils and calamities of civil strife 
had put a sudden end to the traditions of the past and closed for- 
ever the playhouses of the Elizabethan dramatists. 

Shirley moved among his contemporaries so modestly and quietly 
that he failed in any peculiar manner to impress himself upon his 
age. He had no quarrel with the life of his times nor with the 
methods of his art. He accepted both as he found them, and for 
fifteen years worked with eminent success and perfect good temper 
among his fellow dramatists. He may have failed to obtrude a 
peculiar point of view or a dominant personality upon his time, 

^Aihrnae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, III. pp. 7.37.44. 



2 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

but his centcmporaries were none the less aware of the qualities 
upon which his fame, as justified by later criticism, rests. Mas- 
sinsr&r, Ford, Eandolph, and May wrote in praise of his gentle 
muse, and found it to his commendation that in an age that ran 
to "forced expressions" and "rack'd phrase" his Helicon ran 
smooth. In all the commendatory poems written for his various 
plays, the leading thought is a recognition of the fact that Shirley 
relied for his success upon the older methods, and refused to cater 
to popular approval by the exaggerated and decadent art of many 
of his lesser contemporaries. The pit delighted in the obscenities 
of Brome and Killigrew, and the gallants of the time, as Shirley 
himself has remarked, censured plays that were not "bawdy. "^ 
But .Shirley could win a public without practicing such arts. To 
the fashional)le audience at the Cockpit he gave 

"'No Babel compositions, to amaze 
The tortur'd reader, no believ'd defence 
To strengthen the bold atheist's insolence, 
No obscene syllable, that may compel 
A blush from a chaste maid; but all so well 
Express'd and orderM, as wise men must say. 
It is a grateful poem, a good play."^ 

His contemporaries praised his discreet though fully adequate 
style ; the good Master of the Revels noted in his office-book "for 
a patterne to other poets" "the beneficial and cleanly way of 
poetry" of Mr. Shirley ; and to him was accorded at last the place 
at the head of the King's C^ompany to which the best playwrights 
of his time aspired. Such in brief was the contemporary estimate 
of Shirley. With the closing of the theatres in 1642, he returned 
to his old profession of teaching.-"* When the drama was revived 
at the Eestoration, the leadership among playwrights passed un- 
fortunately to the younger and inferior poet, Davenant. 

Shirley lived on several years into the Eestoration period, and, 
continued to work, though not in tlie drama. But it must not be 

^Shirley, Dramatic Works, IV, p. 12. 

-Ibid., I, p. Ixxix; poem by Massinger on The Grateful Servant. 

^Mr. Grosse suggests that after the disaster at Marston Moor, Shirley 
retired to France with the Duke of Newcastle. Best Plays of Shirley, 
Mermaid Ser., p. xxvi. 



James t^liirleij ■ 3 

inferred that he Avas iiiimefliately forgotten in his old capacity. 
Pepys records having seen The Traitor in 1660, and from his 
Dkvry we learn that he saw no less than nineteen performances 
of eight different plays by Shirley between that date and 1669. ^ 
Langbaine, writing as late as 1691, mentions having seen four of 
Shirley's plays within his remembrance.- These are all included 
in the list of those seen l)y Pepys. But besides these we know 
that The Young Admiral'' The Brothers,-' The Witty Fair One, 
The Example, and The Opportunitif' were acted sometimes between 
1663 and 1682. Malone complainstliat ''such was the lamentable 
taste of those times that the play^ of Fletcher, Jonson and Shir- 
ley were much oftener exhibited tlian those of our author [Shake- 
speare]."'*' Not only was there a continued interest in Shirley's 
plays on the part of the public, but the early writers on English 
poetry echoed to some extent the estimate of Shirley held by his 
contemporaries. Edward Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum 
(1675), has acknowledged Shirley's talents in a statement that 
he was "little inferior to Fletcher himself." Winstanley (1687) 
and Langbaine (1691), while following Phillips more or less per- 
functorily, must not be deprived of all originality in their critical 
judgments. The latter is especially warm, and, let it be said, 
very just in his short account of Shirley's merits as a poet and 
dramatist. He says of him that he was "•a gentleman" and "one 
of such incomparable parts, that he was the chief of the second- 
rate poets" and "in all his writings shews a modesty unusual, 
seldom found in our age."' It would be only fair to the poet 
and his critic to think that Dryden knew little about Shirley when 
in Mac Flechnoe he loosely joined him with Heywood as a type of 
Shadwell, the "last great prophet of tautology.'"* This criticism 
coming from Dryden could not Imt have aifected the pul)lic mind, 

^Diary, ed. Wheatley. The plays were The Traitor; The Changes; The 
Court Secret; The Grateful Servant; Hyde Park; The Cardinal ; Love's 
Cruelty; Love Tricks. 

-An Account of the Encpish Draniatick Poets, Oxford, l(i91, p. 475. 

'Evelyn, Diary, ed. Bray, p. 200. 

*Malone by Boswell, III, p. 276. 

^Genest, Account of the English Stage. I, pp. 70. 33fl, 34(3. 

"Malone by Boswell, III, p. 273. 

''An Account of the English Draniatick Poets, pp. 474-475. 

^Vorks, Scott-Saintsbiny edition, X, p. 441. 



4 Shirlei/'s Comedies of London Life 

and it is evident tliat after 1G82 Sliirley was rarely, if ever, seen 
npon the stage again. Oldliani, writing soon after the publication 
of 2Iac Flcclcnoe, mentions his works as ''moidding" with Sylvest- 
ers in Duck Lane shops. ^ That Dryden's unjust condemnation 
was not without its effects is further evident from Gildon, who in 
1698 accuses Langl)aine of giving no small praise to "most of the 
indifferent Poets, so that shou\l a Stranger to our Poets read 
him, they wou'd make an odd Collection of our English Writers, 
for they would be sure to take Heywood, Shirley, etc., and leave 
Dryden," etc.- But contem]:)tuous mention soon ran to abuse, 
and in another satirist of the time, one Eobert Gould, whom 
Genest accused of having stolen one of his plays from Shirley,^ 
we learn of the poet as 

"The scandal of the ancient stage, 
Shirley, the very D'Urfey of his age."* 

Pope, strangely enough, passed Shirley by without comment; 
and from this time on to the appearance of Dr. Farmer's Essay, 
1767, little is heard of Shirley beyond the fact that several of his 
plays were reprinted at various times."' To the neglected poet 
Farmer traces an idea that Milton had used, and in passing pays 
the old dramatist the compliment of an "imagination sometimes 
fine to an extraordinary degree."*^ This praise undoubtedly did 
much to call attention to a man who in his lifetime had been too 
modest to push his own claims. Even without the aid of Farmer 
it would have been impossible for Shirley to escape the sympa- 
thetic scrutiny of Charles Lamb, and it is due to this critic that 
in the early part of the nineteenth century Shirley came into his 
own again. '^ Sir Walter Scott gave him a just valuation about 
the same time, and also remarked that a complete set of his works 

'See Shirley. Janif's, Dictionary of yatiomd Biofiraphy. 

''Lives and Characters of the Eiiplish Dramatic Poets, p. 131. 
^Account of the English Stage, II. pp.73-74. 

*See Shirley, James, Dictionary of National Biography. 

■^Giles Jacobs, Poetical Register, London, 1723, I, pp. 237-42. gives a 
list of Shirley's plays, and mildly dissents from Gildon's complaint against 
Langbaine. 

'^Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, p. 38. 

'Specifnens of English Dramatic Poets, pp. 387-408. 



James Shirley 5 

was much esteemed by collectors.^ Genest, writing about 1830, 
declared that "nothing is so much wanted in the dramatic line 
as an edition of Shirle3''s plays — an edition was promised to the 
public in 1815, or perhaps sooner — the promise was repeated agam 
and again — sometimes in the shape of a formal advertisement. "- 
The edition promised was by Gifford^ who for some reason was 
unable to finish the task, dying in 1826. As it was generally 
known that he was at work upon this venture, other editors were 
deterred from issuing any of Shirley's plays. Otherwise we should 
undoubtedly have had an edition fifteen years earlier. As it was, 
Dyce finally brought the work begun by Gifford to completion in 
the authoritative edition of 1833. 

Upon the issuance of the Gifford-Dyce edition in 1833, there 
appeared in the Quarterly Review'^ an admirable anonymous essay 
on Shirley, to the soundness and sympathy of which little has been 
added since. In more recent times Swinburne has given us a very 
competent essay, with the critical results of which it would be 
hard to disagree in any important detail.'* But his criticism has 
the doubtful value of being too equitable. In his desire to do 
perfect justice to Shirley's weak points, he has neutralized to a 
great extent his praise of his merits, and leaves us with the feel- 
ing that Shirley's genius was merely "mild and apathetic." This 
does not seem critically fair. Yet even so recent and excellent a 
critic as Mr. Courthope has huddled the poet away in a few words 
as falling in the company of such men as Brome, Cartwright, and 
Randolph.'' Dr. Ward fully appreciates the merits of Shirley 
in his History of English Dramatic Literature; but the chro- 
nological method which Dr. Ward has adopted in this Avork 
makes a comparative estimate of Shirley diffifcnlt for the reader 
to form. It is to a more recent work on the Elizabethan drama 
that we must turn for an adequate comparative treatment of our 
author. Professor Schelling has put Shirley in his proper place 

'Dryden, Worl:s, Scott-Saintsbnry edition, X. p. 442. This edition of 
D'ryden appeared first in 1808, the same year as Lamb's specimens. 

-Account of the English Stage, IX, p. 542. 

^Vol. 49, 1833, p. 1. The Quarterly gives the date of pnblication as 
1832. 

^Fortnightly Revieir, XLVII (n. s.), p. 461. 

=A History of English Poetry, IV, p. 384. 



6 Shirlei/'s Comedies of London Life 

wlieii lie calls the reigu of Charles 1 "ahove all the period of Shir- 
le}^'""^ The reason for Shirley's failure genuinely to impress either 
his time or the times to come, Professor Schelling says, is not far 
to seek. "Shirley, coming at the end of a great drama, was electic 
in the practice of his art. He ^vas neither frankly a disciple 
like Massinger nor daringly an innovator like Ford." Critical 
estimate of Sliirley from his own day to our own has not neglected 
the main traits of his genuis : his modesty, his competency, and 
the sweet charm of his poetic fancy; hut there has heen some in- 
justice done him in an emphasis of his negative merits, and a 
failure to define his relative contemporary standing. However, 
with this brief summary of his contemporary and posthumous 
fame before us. we may turn with possibly greater sureness to a 
fresh examination of his work and merits. 

In any estimate of Shirley's genius, the conditions of the times 
in which he wrote can not be too clearly kept in mind. With the 
coming of James to the throne of England there is evident, even 
to the. superficial student of the. period, a change in atmosphere 
and literary aim. The whole substance and tone of the plays of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, for instance, is different from that of 
earlier masters like Dekker, Jonson, and Shakespeare. The 
Jacobean drama deserted the broader interests of national life 
and character for the narrower function of amusing a courtly 
circle. In passing from the patronage of the public to that of 
the court, the drama lost in vitality and human significance. For 
the genuine study of human personality in the earlier plays, artists 
like Beaumont and Fletcher substituted the clever plotting of 
artificial romantic story ; instead of the copious richness and care- 
less strength of the great Elizabethans, the Jacobean playwrights 
had nothing better to offer than a more finished art; the healthy 
directness and buoyancy of the earlier drama declined, and the 
tone of Jacobean plays is frequently suggestive of the profligacy 
and moral taint (:i the rich and leisured class. There is no better 
example of the desertion of a national experience in thought and 
life than that found in the poetry of the reigns of James and 
Cliarles. Instead of great national poets, the playwrights and 
song writers of the Jacobean period became literary purveyors to 

'^Elizabethan Drama, IT, p. 427. 



James Shirley 7 

the upper classes, or, in the case of the Cavalier lyrists, gentle- 
men dabbling in poetry as an elegant pastime. The poetry of the 
first quarter of the seventeenth century is frequently delicate and 
refined, and always literary; but it has lost greatly in closeness to 
life, in richness and power. Beaumont and Fletcher are the first 
poets after Shakespeare to show .this decline in poetic greatness in 
the drama. With all their gain in technique, and in spite of the 
real charm of their poetry, we cannot but miss the greater interest 
in human affairs and human jjersonality that fascinated the men 
who came under the earlier and fresher influence of the Eenais- 
sance. The shift of emj^hasis from the charm of life to the charm 
of art is felt in the poetry of all men who wrote after IGlG. 

Shirley is the lineal descendant of Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
continues the same vein of delicate sentiment, the same dramatic 
effectiveness, and the same romantic themes of these poets. He 
studied these men assiduously, and he comes as near to them in 
quality and kind of work as it is possible for one artist independ- 
ently to follow another. The olivious criticism passed upon Beau- 
mont and Fletcher is applicable to Shirley: he was essentially a 
literajy artist rather than a professed student of human life. He 
was the dramatic poet of a courtly circle. What the audience of 
the Cockpit wanted was not a profound criticism of life, but some- 
thing to while a^vay an hour or two pleasantly. Shirley gave 
them dramatized romantic story, kept at a literary level by fre- 
quent touclies of charming poetry. "Interest in his characteristic 
plays is (Mrected to the narrative rather than to character in 
action. This eiftphasis on the story interest made his plays pleas- 
ant t'^ listen to just a« thov are pleasant to read; but they do not 
take vit-n] Imld of one wlio studio.^ them, and it is easy to forget 
the substance of them. A pleasing corroboration of this came to 
mv notice in some recent reading. I have forgotten the author. 
but T think it was Lowell. He tells of seeing a volume of Sliirley 
on his library shelves. Attracted to fresh reading in the old 
dramatists, he took down the volume only to find the pages marked 
by his own pencilings. He had evidently read this book at an 
earlier time, but the memory of it had com])letely deserted him. 
Whatever criticism there is in this fact is probably fundamental 
to all rurelv romantic story. Even the greater plays of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher are difRcult to remember in detail. There is 



8 Sliidey's Comedies of London Life 

something in the conventionality of the romantic plots, a lack of 
vital characterization, which seems to account for this. The 
momentary zest of the cleverly constructed plots, a prettiness and 
charming suflfi/ciency of line, carries one through these plays with 
interest and leaves one pleasantly satisfied; but they do not fix 
themselves in one's memory nevei- to be forgotten. One closes a 
volume of Shirley with the same feeling with which the poet's 
audience of courtly ladies and gentlemen must have left the Cock- 
pit, that of having been pleasantly and worthily entertained, with- 
out a rankling thought or startling fact left in the memory to dis- 
turb one's ordinary view of life. 

The tragic bitterness and humorousness of experience depicted 
in the pages of the greater Elizabethans was the result of a glad 
zest in life that animated noble and cijtizen alike in Elizabeth's 
day. The moral and political muddle that developed under James 
did away with this. Under the Stuarts the courtier class drew 
away to themselves, and carried with them the drama as an amuse- 
ment for their leisure, one would think in later years as a blind to 
hide the darkening prospect. Shirley was the playwright of this 
class, and his plays were contrived for their amusement. The 
conventionality and remoteness of romantic story is what had tra- 
ditionally pleased aristocratic audiences. Shirley seized upon this 
interest, and it is only incidentally that his plays suggest the more 
serious function of a criticism of life. The consequent loss of 
power and universal significance in his work is the obvious criti- 
cism brought against him by his modern readers. Assuming, then, 
the character of the art that Shirley favored, and any criticism 
attaching to it, it will be interesting at this point to note the pro- 
fessional conditions that confronted him when he began his career, 
and to trace how his talents combing with circumstances led to his 
ultimate success. 

In 1625 the master hands had ceased to write in Elizabethan 
comedy, and the period of decadence had begun. Fletcher died 
in this year, and Jonson, although he continued his leadership in 
letters, was not to add anything of importance to the work he 
had gathered together in 1616. Chapman had fallen into real 
obscurity, and is only heard from in his doubtful collaboration 
with Shirley; while the exponents of the old popular comedy had 
long ago completed their work. Shirley had already achieved his 



James Shirley 9 

first success in his play. Love Tricks, before Henrietta Maria in 
1625 created by patent what was afterwards known as the Queen's 
men. This patronage of the Queen Consort soon raised her com- 
pany to competition with the older and more important company 
of the Iving's men, the continuance of whose patent Charles had 
sanctioned by one of the first acts of his reign. The way of Shir- 
ley's succession to primacy in the Queen's Company was freed 
from serious competition, and the happy success of his early ven- 
tures secured him in his place. Massinger, already established in 
his career, was amply provided for at the head of the King's Com- 
pany. Ford did not make his first dramatic venture until 1628; 
furthermore, he never assumed a professional attitude toward the 
drama. The poets of the 3'ounger generation, Brome, Cartwright, 
and Davenant, who come on somewhat later, were unable in either 
imagination or technical skill to surpass the playwright of the 
Queen's Company. Massinger thus remained to the end Shirley's 
only important professional rival. 

But aside from the fact that Shirley had no immediate rival, if 
we look more closely we shall see how perfectly qualified he 
was for the position that was waiting for him at the head of the 
Queen's Company. Before he came to London in 1625 to set up 
as a playwright, he had led the life of a modest and retired gen- 
tleman. He had proceeded to his Master's Degree in 1619, and 
afterwards had taken orders, becoming a minister at St. Albans. 
Between 1623 and 1625, he became a convert to the Church of 
Eome, and held the mastership of a St. Albans grammar-school. 
From such quiet and refined pursuits, and encouraged by the great 
success of his first venture, he came up to the metropolis as a 
writer of plays. His cultivation and gentlemanly qualities, coupled 
with his real ahility as a dramatic craftsman, explain the patron- 
age of many friends of the theater, among whom the King and 
Queen were the most prominent. To his royal patroness he must 
have been especially acceptable, for he was elegant and amiable 
in manne]-, and bore always after his conversion a constant attach- 
ment to the Catholic faith. ^ He was heartily in sympathy with 
the life of the court, and frequently mentioned in his plays with 

^For references to Shirley's plays substantiating this statement, see 
Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature, III, p. 90n. 



^a 



10 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

full acceptance the Stuart doctrine of the divine right of kings/ 
His perfect harmon}' with his courtier audience is evinced by the 
fact that he was seemingly unintiutnced l)y any contemporary con- 
tentions either political or religious. In none of his plays is there 
the slightest anticipation of the impending struggle; nowhere 
any gloomy reflection, any melanclioly lines that would lead us 
to believe that the seriousness of the political situation had ever 
intruded upon his thought. Nor is there in Shirley any trace of 
the growing influence of Puritanism, which had begun to exert a 
control over the writings of some of his contemporaries. His atti- 
tude of artistic disengagement was largely due to his acceptance 
of life as he found it in the courtly circle for which he wrote. At 
peace with himself and his times, Shirley wrote to please. His 
philosophy is never that of the misanthrope; he never plays the 
part of the satirist, but always writes from the standpoint of a 
happy participant in the life of the world. The pul)lic for which 
he wrote did not care for moralizing; they left that to the Puri- 
tans and the common peojile. They came to the theater to be 
amused, and Shirley, by training ])olite and affable, and at least 
in sympathies a part of them, fell naturally to the place of their 
purveyor. 

But Shirley's success and real merits are founded on a deeper 
basis than the broader sympathies of a man of the world alone 
would justify. He had a ready learning, and was thoroughly 
versed in the Avritings of his predecessors. Before he came up to 
London, the editing of the older men was under way. Ben Jon- 
son had collected his plays in IGIG ; Shakespeare was edited in 
1623. Later, in 1632, Lyly was collected, and Marstnn in 1633. 
Shirley was obviously a "devourer" of ])rinted plaVs. One of the 
most striking things in first reading his works is the constant 
reminiscences of the older writers.- The cliarge of unoriginality 
has coramonly l)een lodged against liim with some show of truth; 

'Dniiuatic Works, III, p. 4(57: 

'"Princes ave here 
The copies of eternity, and create, 
When they but will, our happiness." 
-The Traitor is an interesting example of Shirley's intimacy with liis 
predecessors. Act I, 2 recalls the traitor scene in' Henry F ,• Act III, 1 
recalls a famous scene in Henry IV : and the masque in Act III, 2 is 
reminiscent of Hamlet. 



James Shi Hey 11 

but even unoriginalit}- does not preclude success. His use of old 
themes and familiar motives may have been one element in his 
success, especially as he was able to use over and over again old 
dramatic devices, and yet maintain a novelty of combination and 
a charm of poetical phrase that delighted and surprised. Xot 
only had his predecessors bequeathed him substance for his drama, 
but he had evidently studied their methods with discrimination, 
for in a purelv technical sense he rarely fell into any of their 
special sins. 

Combined with a wide knowledge of the older drama was Shir- 
ley's own native sense of what was truly dramatic. It is hardly 
fair to him to say tliat "he avoids over-emphasis, as much from 
exhaustion as from good taste."^ It robs the man of a distin- 
guishing virtue. To have used material that had done service upon 
the stage for over fifty years with so much fresbness and dramatic 
mastery was no mean accomplishment. His art was eclectic, to be 
sure, but his eclecticism was guided by a discerning judgment 
only possible in one gifted with real dramatic insight. And be it 
remembered that he was prescribed by the greatest masters : and 
to so intimate a student of them, and modest withal, an unaware- 
ness of this limitation was impossible. Let us not deprive Shirley 
of the virtue of moderation, when we have before us the excesses 
of his lesser contemporaries and the doubtful experiments of the 
greater poet, Ford. 

It has been seen under what favorable circumstances Shirley 
found a place waiting for his special talents; how he was unem- 
barrassed by any close competition; and how his personal qualities 
made him acceptable to the audience for which he wrote. To his 
profession he brought a mind familiar with the practice of his 
greater predecessors and trained in their methods ; and to this he 
added, as we shall see, his native talents of a true dramatic sense. 
no mean vein of poetry, and a fecundity of production that put all 
rivalry without bounds. 

Some of Shirley's best work is to be found in his comedies of 
London life. In this field, as in the whole province of his work, 
he has attempted a surprising number of themes and varying 
types. One. curiously enough, is a moral interlude with ab.-tract 

^Garnett and Gosse. Enf/Ush Literature, II, \). 359. 



13 Shir/eij's Comedies of London Life 

characters; several are pure comedy with just the suggestion of a 
serious background; two at least are distinctly- serious with comic 
secondary plots or comic episodes; while three on fashionable Lon- 
don life are paire comedies of manners. There are in all some ten 
or eleven of these comedies.^ In his first play, Love Tricks, or the 
School of Compliment, Shirley betrays very plainly where he has 
fed. It is a crude example of eclecticism in which the art of the 
dramatist has not been sufficiently developed to cover palpable 
borrowings. The play is heterogeneous, combining several forms 
of drama, and recalling in different places specific scenes from 
Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher.- It is interesting as a juve- 
nile exercise in methods that were later to assume artistic poise. 
A Contention for Honor and Riches Langbaine was at a loss to 
classify, being in doubt whether to call it an "Interlude" or an 
"Entertainment." It was merely Shirley's attempt to apply the 
older methods of the morality to the life of his times, and illus- 
trates the poet's comprehensive range. The play is well worth 
reading for the graphic pictures of London types, in which Shirley 
appears in a more clearly marked satirical vein than usual, but 
does not call for detailed remarks here. 

Perhaps the best of Shirley's earlier comedies is The Witty Fair 
One. It is especially remarkable for the constructive ability and 
dramatic discernment shown in the clever plotting of its merry 
intrigue. It is* a play in which the old theme of the outwitting 
of a father by a daughter in her attempt to marry against his 
wishes is treated with surprising ingenuity. The great interest of 
this play is its revelation of the master dramatist in Shirley at so 
early a date as 1628. The use of the ambiguous message of Vib- 
letta in the first act; the still more exciting exchange of letters 
which later on carries the action to its culmination with absorb- 
ing interest; the novelty of the sub-plot, in which Master Fowler 
is fooled into believing himself dead; — all are strikingly dramatic, 
and give rise to no end of witty dialogue. Complete unity is 
maintained in a strict subordination of the secondary action and 
a skillful economy in the characters. Sensible, though seemingly 

^Love Tricks, The Wedding, The Brothers, The Witty Fair One, The 
Changes, Hyde Park, The Ball, The Gamester, The Example, The Lady of 
Pleasure, The Constant Maid. 

-Cf. Schelling. Elizahethan Drama, II, p. 287. 



James Shirley 1.3 

dismissed from the scene at one time, appears at the end as an 
instrument of retributive justice. The Tutor, who has given us 
some good fooling in the early part of the play, takes a leading 
part in the gulling of the almost infallible Brains, a consumma- 
tion that brings the action to its closing scenes. The play remains 
a triumphant example of Shirley's constructive skill, and in the 
handling of the intrigue it follows methods at the other end of 
the art from such plays, for instance, as the All Fools of Chapman. 

In The Wittij Fair One the comic element all but overshadows 
the serious interest in the love affair of Violetta and Aimwell. We 
now turn to a type of comedy, probably more characteristic of 
Shirley, in which the serious interest predominates. The Wed- 
ding co]nes very near to tragedy, but is relieved by comic scenes 
in which Shirley shows a marked advance over his earliest at- 
tempts in Love T'ricks. But a play of this type that is more com- 
pletely representative of Shirley is The Example. It offers in 
both its main and secondary actions dramatic themes of which he 
seems never to have tired. The illicit pursuit of Lady Peregrine 
by Fitzavarice, and his final regeneration under the spell of her 
virtue and womanliness, is, as we shall see, the poet's favorite sit- 
uation. The secondary plot, in which Jacinta gulls a pair of fool- 
ish lo^■ers, was no less attractive to him as a means of comic 
effect. A continuous thread of fun is kept up in the entrances 
and exits of Sir Solitary Plot, a direct imitation of Jonson's 
"humours." Shirley's eye for the dramatic is nowhere more fit- 
tingly illustrated than in the complication that arises out of the 
arrest of Peregrine for his debt to Fitzavarice. What could con- 
vince the jealous husband more strongly of the -guilt and mean- 
ness of his enemy? Yet Fitzavarice is innocent in the matter of 
the arrest. It gives him, however, a chance to show his real 
colors, to o])en the eyes of Peregrine to the real situation. Com- 
ing as the play does after the "wicked" play of The Gamester, the 
enforcement of the moral may seem more apparent. It can be 
safely said, however, that Shirley never takes the moral point of 
view, but invariably the dramatic and artistic. 

It is with renewed interest that we turn to a series of plavs in 
which Shirley has mastered his medium, and, no longer depending 
on books, drew his characters from the fashionable life about him. 
In Hyde Pari-, The Ball an(\\^he Lady of Pleasure, he has done 



14 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

his most original and chaiacteiistic work in tlie pure comedy of 
manners. The first two plays follow one another in quick succes- 
sion, showing the poet ready to follow up a popular "hit'' and give 
his audience a hit of. fun on their own foihles. It would he too 
much to expect more than the lightest comedy on the suhjects under 
treatment; [and hoth of these plays depend for their effect rather 
upon the gaiety and sprightliness of scene and dialogue than upon 
any full portrayal of comic character.7 From the hustle and ex- 
citement of races in Hyde Park, we pass to the more exclusive in- 
door amusements in The Ball, the novelty of which had inspired 
the rumor that "strange words" were bandied and strange "revels 
kept." Thus in the reign of Charles I we get an intimate glimpse 
of London society at pastimes to which succeeding generations 
have unfailingly given enthusiastic approval. After the two come- 
dies of 1()32, Shirley allowed several years to elapse before present- 
ing his public with another in a similar vein. In 1635, his Lady 
of Pleasure was presented for the first time. Swinburne has said 
that this comedy "but for a single ugly incongruity would be one 
of the few finest examples of pure higli comedy in verse that our 
stage could show against that of Moliere." This is full praise 
enough, but warranted in the face of criticism that passes Shir- 
ley's art as unoriginal or exhausted. In no comedy of manners 
that I can call to mind have we so intimate and delightful a pic- 
ture of any phase of London life. It is impossible for us to think 
that Shirley is satirizing the life of the leisure classes in this 
play. He was too much in sympathy with this life himself. 
What he has done is to accentuate the facts for comic purposes; 
or at most he is merely laughing at social excesses. The Lady of 
Pleasure has persuaded her husband to sell his holdings in the 
country and take a house in the Strand. She is soon led into 
follies and extravagances in which her husband fears for her fame 
and his purse. Remonstrating in vain. Lord Bornwell hits upon 
the plan of curing her by indulging in equal extravagance. Hav- 
ing chided her not long before for her excesses, he comes in an. 
assumed mood of having seen the folly of his thrift, and prom- 
ises to "repent in sack and prodigality" to her heart's content. 
The ruse works, and to the wife's eyes is revealed the danger to 
the family exchequer at this furious rate of spending. Subor- 
dinated to the main action is a characteristic sub-plot in which the 



James Shirley 15 

chief figure is the rich young widow, Celestina. (The charming- 
quality of tliis character is her perfect good sense and good humor.) 
Beautiful in person, she is indulging in all the social pastimes to 
the extent, perhaps, of impeaching her good name. But accept- 
ing for what they are worth the censures and attentions of the 
needy young gallants who flock about her, she maintains her 
course, the perfect mistress of her heart and her demeanor. Her 
character receives its full vindication in the scene where Lord A — 
makes dishonorable advances. Even in this extremity her self- 
command does not desert her. and we have the beautiful scene in 
which she reprimands his Lordship with cleverness and dignity. 
Another point worth remarking in this play is the variety of con- 
temporary types that are handled. Besides the Lady of Pleasure, 
who is completely carried away by the gaiety of the Strand, there 
is the charming character of Celestina ; and what we would all too 
gladly have foregone, the courtesan Decov, with a side glance into 
the darker ways of fashionable life. Among the men is to be dis- 
tinguished the thrifty knight, Sir Thomas Bornwell, who has no 
intention of losing either his head or his money in the social 
whirl. Clearly marked from the crew of needy gallants is the 
higher type of titled aristocracy, Lord A — , who is represented as 
a man of lineage and influence. Perhaps the closest that Shirley 
comes to satire in this play is the character of Frederick, through 
whom, in one of the most delightful of scenes, we obtain a vivid 
picture of the attitude of the stage toward the university scholar. 
In these three plays we meet more or less the same ])eople, and 
the only novelty is that we see them under varying circumstances. 
Through all of these plays trips the wntty, free-spoken young 
woman of fashion, Carol in Hifde Park, Lucina in The Ball, and"' 
Celestina in The Lad// of Pleasure.^ Tn each we find a lord, and 
the character is so much alike in the three plays that it is impos- 
sible to believe that Shirley did not have some contemporary fig- 
ure in mind. It is interesting to note that this character, now 
Lord Bonville, now Lord Eainhow, and in The Lady of Pleasure 
more anonymously Lord A — ■, is found in Shirley's favorite situa- 
tion of making questionalde advances to a lady by whom he is 
later redeemed to more virtuous conduct. Then Ave have a lot of 
impecunious men about town, who play the races, hover about the 
ladies at a fashionalile ball, or ]iay assiduous attentions to the mis- 



IG Shirley's Comedies of London Life ^ 

tress of an exclusive salon. In these comedies of a more or less 
realistic type, we get glimj^ses into a side of social life which none 
of Shirley's contemporaries has treated with tlie same easy famili- 
arity and intimacy. 

Enough has been said regarding the comedies most character- 
istic of Shirley's practice to permit conclusions to be drawn as to 
his powers as a dramatic artist. In reading his plays on London 
life, one becomes familiar through frequent repetition with certain 
types of character and certain situations. Especially in his earlier 
comedies he has a tendency to emphasize types of character that 
have appeared before in the plays of Fletcher and Jonson. This 
tendency toward types has been pointed out in the discussion 
of the three comedies on fashionable life noticed above; but 
it must be acknowledged that in these later works he shows a 
closer reliance upon actual personages and occurrences for his 
dramatic material. Even more marked than this tendency of his 
characters to fall into types, is his constant recurrence to certain 
situations.^ His favorite theme in the plays on London life is 
that of a man suddenly restored to his nobler self by the repulse 
of a virtuous woman Avhom he is pursuing illicitly. The situation 
growing out of a strange compound of noble and rakish qualities 
in a man, recurs in no less than five plays, assuming in one 
the importance of the main action.- A situation that seemed to 
be of great comic interest to him is that of the witty woman who 
gulls a number of troublesome suitors, as in The Ball and the sub- 
plot of The Example.^ But Shirley's peculiar merit as a play- 
wright lies conspicuously in his constructive skill and his sure 
sense of the dramatic. This is strikingly manifest in such early 
plays as The Wedding and The Witty Fair One, the latter being 
an almost perfect model of construction. His plays are always 
sustained throughout, while his preference for running a second 
plot parallel with, yet subordinate to, the main plot has the great 
advantage of hazarding less the unity of the whole than a com- 
plicated interweaving of the various actions. There is also at- 
tained 1)y this method a greater simplictiy of plot : at leasi, the 

'See Schelling, Elizabethan Drama. II, p. 296. 
'^The Example. 

'Shirley's delight in this kind of love intrigue finds full vent in The 
Humorous Courtier. 



James Shirley !'<' 

apparent complicatiun of the earlier comedies of intrigue is plainly 
wanting in these pla^^s of Shirley.;^ It is also pleasant to find that 
the dialogue never lags. As an example of repartee and cleverly 
conducted dialogue, the Lady of Pleasure, for instance, is an irre- 
proachable example. yFor the purposes of comic expression, Shir- 
ley's blank verse is peculiarly fitted. It is frequently very close to 
prose, and seldom labors under heavy imagery or classical allusion. 
As a medium for comedy, it is not to be deplored that Shirley's 
style has not risen to superlative passion or beauty ; it is eminently 
more important to be clear and direct in the lighter vein of 
comedy. 

In his profession Shirley acknowledges Jonson as his master, 
but in actual practice he is the direct descendant of Beaumont and 
Fletcher. His comedy is never of the judicial type, and is strik- 
ingly free from satire. There is, furthermore, a graceful and "airy 
conventionality'^ about his \vork that raises it in his treatment of 
manners above the danger of gross realism. If we except the dis- 
parity in poetic genius, we will find Shirley's attitude toward life 
and ai^ to be largely that of Shakespeare, though, of course, much 
more conventional. It is the spirit of broad sympathy; the look- 
ing at life from the point of view of a happy participant rather 
than that of a critical spectator. It is largely this that marks 
Shirley of the old romantic line, and gives an original interest to 
his wofk. Having read through much in Elizabethan drama that 
is only historically interesting or merely beautiful in detail, the 
critic would hardly 1)e just if he withheld a grateful admiration 
from Shirley, who, in a declining age, maintained a steady excel- 
lence in style and execution, and gave to old material new life 
and fresh charm. 

Shirley's gifts as a poet are not commensurate with his abilities 
as a practical playwright. His imagination seldom does more 
than play about the deep and searching emotions of the human 
heart, and rather runs in even, delicate tracery through all that 
he wrote. It is perhaps for this reason that his genuine quality 
as a poet is frequently neglected, — this coupled with the fact that 
he did not hold the secret to that mine from which the earlier 
masters drew with exhaustless prodigality. His lines are never 
crowded with thought or too abundant imao'erv, and his striking 



18 SJiiHei/'s Comedie-s of London Life 

passages frequently owe their quality to one or two deeply poetic 
lines, as in this short one quoted hy Mr. Gosse :^ 

"Yes, Felisarda, he is gone, that in 
The morning promis'd many years; but death 
Hath in a few hours made him as stiff, as all 
The winds of winter had thrown cold upon him, 
.tnd whisper' d him to inarhh."' 

In the following passage, the simple fidelity and effective move- 
ment nf the last line creates the poetic value of the whole figure: 

"What a brave armour is 
An innocent soul ! How like a rock it bids 
Defiance to a storm, against whose ribs 
The insolent waves but dash themselves in pieces, 
And fall and hide their heads in passionate foam!"^ 

And in a somewhat bolder and more lurid vein, the following 

lines from The Cardinal: 

"I come 
To shew the man you have provok'd, and lost. 
And tell you what remains of my revenge. — 
Live, but never presume again to marry: 
I'll kill the next at the altar, and quench all 
The smiling tapers with his blood."* 

While the beauty of his poetry in many case< becomes a beauty 
of line, the plays are not without numerous passages of sustained 
and even elaliorate poetry, as in the lines which Dr. Farmer con- 
sidered in imagination "fine to an extraordinary degree." 

^Be.st Plat/s ,of fihirlej/. Mermaid ser.. p. xiii. 
-Shirley, Dramatic Worlcs, T, p. 249. 
. 'Ibid., IV. p. 181. 

*Ihic1.. V. p. 320. Cf. also the following from Beaumont and Fletcher, 
Philastev. Act V, Sc. 3, Mermaid Ser., p. 175. 

"I'll provide 
A masque shall make your Hymen turn his saffron 
Into a sullen coat, and sing sad requiems 
To your departing souls; 
liloofl shall put out your torches," etc. 



James Shirley 19 

"Her eye did seem to labour with a tear, 
Which suddenly took birth, but, overweigh'd 
With its own swelling, dropja'd upon her bosom, 
Which, by reflection of her light, appeared 
As nature meant her sorrow for an ornament; 
After, her looks grew cheerful, and I saw 
A smile shoot graceful upward from her eyes, 
As if they had gain VI a victory o'er grief. 
And Math it many beams twisted themselves, 
Upon whose golden threads the angels walk 
To and again from heaven."^ 

Shirley was very happy in his treatment of gentle sorrow, and 
in the following lines we meet again a l)eautiful description ^i 
a grief that has all but spent itself : 

"Sorrow and 1 
Are taking leave, I hope, and these are only 
Some drops after the cloud has wept liis violence. "- 

Shirley's poetry is very even in quality. For this reason it is 
difficult to pick superior passages. It will be interesting, how- 
ever, to illustrate the poetic quality which he sustains with ease 
throughout his plays. The following is fairly representative : 

"But what story 
Mention'd his name, that had his ])rince's bosom, 
Without the ])eople's hate? 'tis sin enough. 
In some men, to be great; the throng of stars. 
The rout and common people of the sky. 
Move still another way than the sun does, 
That gilds the creature: take your honours hack, 
And, if you can, that purple of my veins. 
Which flows in your's, and you shall leave me in 
. A state I shall not fear the great ones' envy, 
IN^or commo]i people's rage."^ 

^Dramatic Works, I, p. 202. 
-lUd., Ill, p. 206. 
UUd., II, p. 107. 



20 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

Another passage from the same play will illustrate the quality 
of much of the dialogue of Shirley's serious dramas : 

"To one whom you have heard talk of, 
Your fathers knew him well : one, who will never 
Give cause I should suspect him to forsake me; 
A constant lover, one whose lips, though cold, 
Distil chaste kisses : though our bridal bed 
Be not adorn'd with roses, 'twill be green; 
We shall have virgin laurel, cypress, yew, 
To make us garlands; though no pine do burn, 
Our nuptial shall have torches, and our chamber 
Shall be cut out of marble, where we'll sleep, 
Free from all care for ever: Death, my lord, 
I hope, shall be my husband."^ 

The passages quoted above are not necessarily examples of Shir- 
ley's best poetry ; but they will give a very good idea of the poetic 
character of his plays as a whole. The figures are neither strik- 
ing nor rare, but the speeches are carried off. with ease and grace 
and an air of refinement and good breeding that recalls the poetry 
of the Cavalier song-writers. The delicate conventionality and re- 
strained artistry of such speeches fails somehow to carry the con- 
viction of passion springing out of human experience. The poetry 
does not seem to come inevitably from the character and situa- 
tion : there is something extra-ornamental about it. Lowell touches 
the point closely in the following comment : "Tbe sorrows of 
Beaumont and Fletcher's personages have almost as much charm 
as sadness in them, and we think of the poet more than of the 
sufferer. Yet his emotion is genuine, and we feel it to be so even 
while we feel also tbat it leaves his mind free to think about it."- 
Notwithstanding the great advance made by the later Elizabethans 
in the technical handling of plot and in a sure sense for dramatic 
situation, they were never able to raise the speeches of their char- 
acters to the level of poetry and still retain the verisimilitude to 
human passion and action that characterizes the work of the earlier 
masters. This is to my mind the outstanding weakness of the 

^Dramatic ^Yorks, II, p. 165. 
^Old English Dramatists, p. 106. 



James Shirley 21 

plays of Shirley, as well as of the work of Massinger and Beaumont 
and Fletcher. 

Dr. Ward has said that "in very few of our dramatists shall 
we meet with so many passages of a poetic Ijeauty, elaborate 
indeed, hut at the same time genuine, and finding its expression 
in imagery at once original and appropriate. Shirley was en- 
dowed with a sense of the picturesque, which would render many 
of these passages admirable themes for a painter who would allow 
them to linger in his mind; the hues and shades of the seasons 
of the year, and of the changes of day and night, and the world 
of flowers in particular, left their delicate impression upon the re- 
ceptive fancy of this true poet.'" 

Of longer lyrics Shirley has not left us many that are perfect. 
It was not his common practice to scatter songs throughout his 
plays. Mr. Gosse has selected one of the most lioautiful, the open- 
ing lines of Avhich are : 

"You virgins, that did late despair • 

To keep your wealth from cruel men. 
Tie up in silk your careless hair, 
Soft peace has come again. '*- 

We know that he could write a fine lyric. In the noble lines 
that King Charles loved to hear from old Bowman, we have one of 
the finest lyrics in our language. The thought of death as the 
"leveler" is common in the poetry of all periods, l)ut it has rarely 
found quite such simple and inevitable expression. "It is a nobly 
sim]>le piece of verse," says Lowell, "with the slow and solemn 
cadence of a funeral march. The liint of it seems to have been 
taken from a passage in that droningly dreary 1wok, the 'Mirror 
for Magistrates.' This little poem is one of the best instances of 
the good fortune of the men of that age in the unconscious sim- 
plicity and gladness (I know not what else to call it) of their 
vocal)nlary. The language, so to speak, had just learned to go 
alone, and found a joy in its own mere motion, Avhich it lost as it 
grew older, and to walk was no longer a marvel."'" Though com- 

^History of English Dramatic Literatnre. III. p. 123. 
-Dramatic Works, V, p. 189. 
^Old English Dramatists, p. 11. 



'i2 ^'^hil■hl/'s Comedies of London Life 

monly known, it should be quoted as the last word on Shirley as 
a poet. 

"The glories of our blood and state 
Are shadows, not substantial things; 
There is no armour against fate; 
Death lays his icy hand on kings : 
Scepter and crown, 
Must tumble down, 
• And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 

"Some men with swords may reap the field. 
And plant fresh laurels where they kill ; 
But their strong nerves at last must yield; 
They tame but one another still : 
Early or late. 
They stoop to fate, 
»And must give up their murmuring breath. 
When they, pale captives, creep to death. 

The garlands wither on your brow. 

Then boast no more your mighty deeds; 
Upon Death's purple -altar now, 

See, where the victor-victim bleeds : . 
Your heads must come 
To the cold tomb. 
Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet, and Ijlossom in their dust.'" 

It may be well at tlie expense of some repetition to summarize 
briefly the investigation of Sliirley's methods in dramatic art. The 
most conspicuous merit of his plays is their constructive excel- 
lence. As a playwright he is not excelled by any of the Eliza- 
l)ethan dramatists. He is eclectic in practice, but his eclecticism 
is not blind following. It is guided by a native sense for the 
dramatic, and is discriminating and constructive. And it by no 
means follows that he is unoriginal. It was impossil)le for him 
not to be conscious of the vast amount of literary production that 

^Dramatic Works, VI, p. 396. 



James SJiirlcy 23 

had preceded him, but in s^iite of this he lias succeeded in show- 
ing a real inventive jaower and a sure sense of what is, dramatically 
speaking, the best. In plotting his plays he has shown a greater 
simplicity than his predecessors, and is rarely guilty of produc- 
ing a poorly motived or a disorganized play. The dialogue in his 
comedies is bright and spontaneous, never involved or obscure. 
This, combined with a real sense of humor and a perspicuous 
action, gives the great quality that leads to practical success, 
namely, interest. Mr. Gosse holds that Shirley of all the Eliza- 
bethans could most easily be restored to the modern stage. ^ In his 
treatment of character, he is slightly conventional and frequently 
prone to run into types. When we have read through his comedy 
of manners, we have become well acquainted with the typical Lon- 
doner. We have laughed at the rich young countryman who has 
come up to London to spend his money ; we have seen the ins 
and outs of the needy gallant who wears his own hair, knows how 
to make a leg, and not infrequently lives by his wits. Then there 
is the young widow who gulls a brace of lovers ; and the poor uni- 
versity scholar whose black clothes and modest manners are sadly 
out of fashion in the gay metropolis. We pass through many 
livel}^ scenes : now at a game of dice in an uproarious tavern ; now 
at Hyde Park, playing the races; and more interesting still, at a 
fashionable ball, which some gpod Londoners had whispered was 
something worse than the Family of Love, but which turns out 
to l)e nothing more than the first subscription dance. While the 
characters seldom have that living touch that holds Falstaff so 
vitally and imperishably in our memory, they have a universality 
that makes them interesting to-day. Shirley has avoided the main 
evil incident to a study of eontem])orary life, that is, a too close 
realism. He has given us a vivid and sprightly picture of tlie 
London of his time, not exactly and minutely, l)ut rather in its 
essential human spirit. In connection with all this, it must be re- 
membered that Shirley maintained a purely literary drama, writ- 
ing for the most part in verse. His poetry, as we have seen, is 
adequate and sincere, characterized by a delicate fancy and sus- 
ceptibility rather than by depth of passion or philosophical utter- 
ance. 

'Gosse, Best Playft of Shirley, Mermaid ser., p. xxx. 



24: Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

A brief comment upon Shirley's relative standing among his 
contemporaries will complete my critical estimate of him. Shirley 
readily falls into the best company of his time, namely, that of 
Massinger and Ford. While it may be frankly admitted that 
Shirley does not present a striking individnality as a poet or a 
dramatist, we should be careful not to deny this admirable man 
his chief merit by refusing to recognize the high value of a mod- 
erate and sustained literary excellence. Shirley was evidently a 
man whose modest and cultivated taste would not permit him to 
indulge in excesses to gain an audience, and his artistic practice 
is fairly justified by contemporary success. His work, for in- 
stance, is not marked by such persistent traits as the moral earn- 
estness and rhetorical vein of Massinger, two cjualities that have 
made a strong appeal to English peojjle at all times. Indeed, it 
is upon a moral appeal, by no means concealed by the greatest 
art, that Massinger has so definitely impressed himself upon his 
readers. Special students of Massinger admit this. Lowell con- 
fesses his delight in him to be "not so much for his passion or 
power, though at times he reaches both, as for the love he shows 
for those things that are lovely and of good report in human 
nature, for his sympathy with what is generous and high-minded 
and honorable.''^ Now Shirley is neither moral nor rhetorical ; 
yet, if we put the matter upon an artistic basis, he sufficiently 
holds his own with Massinger as a dramatist, Avhile as a poet he 
as easily surpasses him. To me Massinger just missed poetry in 
most of what he wrote. As a special instance of his poetic insuffi- 
ciency we may take The Guardian, in which not a line rises to the 
level of genuine poetry.- The following passage from Believe as 
You List is typical of much of his work. To appreciate fully the 
failure of the author here, one should have more of the context, 
but the quotation illustrates clearly the difference between rhetoric 
and poetry. 

"There, in an arbour, 

Of itself supported o'er a bubbling spring. 

With purple hyacinths and roses covered, ■ 

We will enjoy the sweets of life, nor shall 

'The Old English Dramatists, p. 122. 

-Cf. Symons, "Introduction" to Best Plays of Massinger, Mermaid Ser. 



James Shirley 25 

Arithmetic sum up the varieties of 

Our amorous dalliance; our viands such, 

As not alone shall nourish ajjpetite, 

But strengthen our jDcrformance; and, when called for. 

The quiristers of the air shall give us music; 

And, when we slumber, in a pleasant dream 

You shall behold the mountains of vexations 

Which you have heaped upon the Eoman tyrants 

In your free resignation of your kingdom. 

And smile at their afflictions."^ 

Here is an opportunity for fine sensuous poetry which the older 
poets would scarcely have missed. The following passage from 
Shirley offers a sufficient parallel to the foregoing lines of Mas- 
singer. Though the two quotations are antithetical in tone, they 
are similar in that both are descriptive passages serving the same 
purpose in the respective plays for which they were written. To 
me the lines from Shirley carry a truer poetic quality : there is an 
atmosphere about them that recalls the happy intuition of the 
earlier masters, especially in the last three lines, which are quite 
inevitable and finely suggestive. 

"This is the place, by his commands, to meet in; 
It has a sad and fatal invitation : 
A hermit that forsakes the world for prayer 
And solitude, would be timorous to live here. 
There's not a spray for birds to perch upon; 
For every tree that overlooks the vale, 
Carries the mark of lightning, and is blasted. 
The day, which smil'd as I came forth, and spread 
Fair beams about, has taken a deep melancholy. 
That sits more ominous in her face than night: 
All darkness is less horrid than half light. 
Never was such a scene for death presented ; 
And there's a ragged mountain peeping over. 
With many heads, seeming to crowd themselves 
Spectators of some tragedy."- 

^Believe As You List. Act 1V\ Sc. 2, Mermaid Ser. 
^Dramatic Works, V. p. 486. 



26 ISJiirleij's Comedies of London Life 

With his other great contemporary^ Shirley's comparative stand- 
ing is more diflScult to decide. Ford has dug deeper but more 
narrowly in his art. He has a penetrating analysis of character 
almost unbearable at times^ but compelling in its fascination; and 
in his relentless probing of human sorrows and human wrongs he 
has struck a deeper^ sadder note in poetry than any other of his 
contemporaries. Jn this song from The Broken Heart, there is a 
poignant beauty frequent in Ford, but seldom reached by Shirley. 

"0, no more, no more, too late 

Sighs are spent; the burning tapers 
Of a life as chaste as fate, 

Pure as are unwritten papers, 
Are burnt out : no heat, no light 

Now remains; 'tis ever night. 

"Love is dead ; let lovers' eyes. 

Locked in endless dreams, 
Th' extremes of all extremes, 

Ope no more, for now Love dies. 
Now Love dies, — implying 

Love's martyrs must be ever ever dying.'*' 

Shirley's verse seldom shows the rare quality of Ford's lyric 
strain; nor. do his tragedies ever present the intensity or subtle 
analysis of Ford's studies in forbidden experience. But if Shirley 
w^as not capable of a "grief deeper than language," nor the master 
of "brief mysterious words, which well up from the depths of des- 
pair," he had other gifts which, taken all in all, probably give him 
a more significant place in the history of our drama than Ford. 
In the variety and fecundity of his production ; in the uniformly 
high poetic quality of his verse; in his adherence to the best tra- 
ditions of the past; and in his complete sympathy with the life of 
his times, Shirley came nearer to sustaining a national drama than 
any other man of the Caroline period. 

There is one point which probably concerns Shirley more as a 
man and an p]lizabethan tluin as a playwright and poet. It has 
been frequently pointed out in the foregoing pages that Shirley 
rarely, if ever, took a moral ])oint of view. For the most part, 

^The Broken Heart, Act IV. Sc. .S. Mermaid Ser.. p. 264. 



James Shirley 5^"^ 

his plays 'are free from any impropriety of subject, and his atti- 
ture on broad lines of conduct is dignified and noble. Xor doas 
he fail to utter noble sentiment. 

"When our souls shall leave this dwelling, 
The glory of one fair and virtuous action 
Is above all the scutcheons on our tonil). 
Or- silken banners over us.'"^ 

And this from The Ladi/ of Pleasure: 

"Something might here be spar'd, with safety of 
Your birth and honour, since the truest wealth 
Shines from the soul, and draws up just admirers."- 

It is to be regretted that in several of his plays he should have 
introduced certain "'ugly incongruities." I have alluded to one 
in The Lady of Pleasure, and a similar thing disfigures his noble 
tragedy, The Cardinal. But it is perfectly reasonable to explain 
these as pure conventions. In the case of The Gam ester, M would 
seem that he had actually deserted his art to catch the ground- 
lings. Charles Kingsley is quite justified when he says that we 
could never put such plays in the hands of our children; but in 
the full length of his strictures on our author he is somewhat per- 
verse.'' In the first place, it is eminently unfair to neglect Shir- 
ley's average practice, and consider The Gamester as typical of all 
he wrote.* In the second place, it is important to keep in mind 
the times in which he lived. In the case of Tlie Gamester, the 
^ jving gave Shirley the plot, and later approved the play ;■'■ and the 
worst enemies of Charles were never able to cast the slightest 
shadow upon his morals as a man. Conventions which today re- 
strict the relations of the sexes did not prevail then ; and coarse- 
ness and broad jesting sometimes ran to extremes. As ^liss 
Woodbridge has ]iertinently i^ointed out in the case of one of ^Fas- 

^Dramatic Works, IT. p. 174. 

-Ibid., IV, p. 8. 

^Plays and Puritans. See also Gardiner, Histonj of England. VII. 
Gardiner is hardly fair in his strictures on The Witty Fair One. 

*See Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, II, p. 293. 

'Malone by Boswell, III, p. 236. See Neilson, W. A.. Cambridge Histori/ 
of English TAteratnre, VT. pp. 227-8. 



28 Shirley' fi Comedies of London Life 

.dnger's plays, we must not take the seeming licenses too seriously, 
"save as an indication of the state of the comic sense in Mas- 
singer's time."' Infidelity and adultery, even madness, were at 
once the most comic and most tragic of themes to the Elizabethan 
mind. In none of his relations in life was Shirley ever other than 
a gentleman, and it is evident from his j^lays that he was upon 
intimate and fiiendly terms with the best people of his day. 
There is a marked spirit of delicacy and refinement in all his 
work that would oppose any gross immorality. As for this treat- 
ment of the common moral problems, it is interesting to com- 
pare him with a poet of an earlier generation. It is not so easy 
to think of the learned and dignified Chapman as immoral. Yet 
if we examine his plays, we shall find that adultery is a common 
theme, used even for purely comic purposes. So much is this the 
case that the results of his several comedies might seem a real in- 
dictment of the constancy and chastity of all women. Happily 
this construction is seldom put upon his plays, and any seeming 
immorality is assigned to the conventions of the age. Shirley 
never uses adultery as a purely comic theme, and to woman he 
has not only given a nohle purity, but to her virtue and chastity 
he has given again and again the power of redeeming a man from 
the sins of illicit passion. Again in the case of Chapman, it is a 
question whether he has any other than an artistic end in view 
when he introduces into his comedies the immoral influences of 
the court upon the citizen. Shirley "is no disciple of the social 
heresy that the pleasures of one class have a right to pollute the 
morals of another."- In fact, his comedies mark a great advance 
in refinement and feeling over those of the preceding reign, and 
bear the stamp of a man who had mingled freely and familiarly 
with the best classes. As Dr. Ward says, "Not one of our pre- 
Restoration dramatists, save Shakespere and again good Thomas 
Heywood, deserves less than Shirley to be singled out for con- 
demnation as an offender against principles which in his genera- 
tion and with his lights he sought to honour and uphold."^ 

^Hfudies in Jonson's Comedy, p. 45. The most satisfactory treatment of 
this matter of the morality of the playwrights will be found in Leslie 
Stephen's essay on Massinger, Hours in a Librarj/, LoncL. 1899, II, p. 141. 

-Ward, English Drmnatic Literature, TIT, p. 12.5. 

Hhid. 



CHAPMAN'S PBACTICE IN COMEDY 



The thought of a eoUaboration between two such men as Shir- 
ley and Chapman in such a play as The Ball is at once stimulat- 
ing to inquiry. The disparity in the personality and the practice 
of the two men would at first tliought almost prompt a denial of 
their professional union upon so slight an authority as a title- 
page by a London printer. The placid and elegant talent of Shir- 
ley, first and foremost a dramatist, is sharply at odds with the 
lofty and ponderous genius of Chapman, to whom the drama ap- 
pealed largely as a means of popular expression, but whose special 
gifts found a more congenial actiyity in the realms of translation 
and pure poetiy. As a mere assertion of this antithesis, howeyer, 
would hardly seem sutficient for argumentative purposes, a few 
pages are here devoted to the chief results of a careful study of 
Chapman's comedies, with the ultimate intention of later apply- 
ing t]iese results to some settlement of his •share in the author- 
ship of The Ball 

As a writer of plays, Chapman is better known by his tragedies 
than by his comedies. The reason for tliis is not difficult to dis- 
cover. He labored faitlifully on his serious plays to make them 
wiorthily represent his art. The result is that they are more con- 
sistently excellent than his comedies, in which he took less interest. 
Not only are his tragedies better as a whole than his comedies, but 
in such plays as Bimj D'Amhios and Byron, Chapman is most 
essentially himself, for on serious themes he could best display his 
fine reflective powers and his normally dignified attitude toward 
life. In so far, then, as Chapman's tragedies represent him most 
characteristically as an artist and a man, they have rightfully re- 
ceived more complete critical study than his less serious work in 
the drama. But while we may accept his tragedies as more rep- 
resentative of Chapman's dramatic art, there is a general reserva- 
tion to be made. For when every respect has l^een paid to the 
effort that went to the writing of these works, and generous ac- 
count taken of the "full sail" of tlie rare passages, it must, never- 
theless, be admitted that the tragedies are dull reading and as 
plays unsuccessful. In comparison with such plays as Shirley's 
Cardinal and Ford's Brol-en Heart, Chapman's tragedies sufl'er 



30 SJiirley's Comedies of London Life 

seriously in technical excellence, revealing plainl}- his inahility to 
adapt his style to the subtle and wayward exigencies of dialogue, 
or to give the action of his plays movement and verisimilitude to 
life. An acquaintance with Bi/ron makes it easy to accept the 
common criticism that Chapman's genius is after all epic rather 
than dramatic, and that his dialogue, while sometimes reaching a 
noble beauty of utterance, is not infrequently inspired by nothing 
more than his scholar's zeal. 

The ready recognition of Chapman's characteristic l)ent in his 
tragedies, and the larger critical emphasis laid upon these plays, 
has somewhat obscured his gift in comedy. With all due respects 
to the merits of his tragedies, and with full recognition of their 
superiority as a whole, the interesting fact remains that Chap- 
man's best individual work in the drama is to be found among his 
comedies. The play of All Fools could with full justice be taken 
as his dramatic masterpiece. With characteristic lack of dramatic 
eriticalness, however. Chapman has called this best example of his 
playwriting "the least allow'd birth of" his "shaken brain. "^ It 
is evident that he never gave himself seriously to comedy. He 
considered only two of his comedies worthy of a dedication ; and 
in the dedication to these plays, there is a note of disparagement 
whollv wanting in the addresses prefixed to his tragedies. He 
probably wrote most of his comedies as a means of revenue, with- 
out any high artistic end in view. The want of a serious aim 
would partially account for the defects as well as the merits of 
these plavs. Structurally his comedies are very unequal. If we 
were to judge from his practice in comedy, it would hardly seem 
that he knew when he was writing well and when he was writing 
ill. In the plays of All Fools and Monsieur D'OIive he reached a 
high measure of success; but he is very blind and bungling on 
the slightly different theme of The Gentleman Usher. When 
working without the steadving hand of a collaborator, he often 
hurried, and failed to sustain his plots. This carelessness of form 
is especially noticeable in the final scenes of his plays, where he has 
a tendencv to get lost or overcome in the complication and to lose 
the best points of the resolution of his comic entanglement. With 
this loss in dramatic structure, however, there went a gain. Freed 

iDedieation to All Fools. 



George Cliapman 31 

from the trammels of a conscious ideal. Chapman improved in 
style. Swinburne has noted the "merit of pure and lucid style 
which distinguishes the best comedies of Chapuian from the bulk 
of his other writings/'^ and accounts for it in tliat Chapman "felt 
himself no louger bound to talk big or stalk stiffly, and in conse- 
quence was not too high-minded to move easily ami s|)cak grace- 
fully.'-- 

At least once Chapman rose to a happy combination of style 
and structure in comedy. In AU Fools he has given us an ex- 
ample of a well developed play, masterly in the handling of an 
intricate intrigue and inspiriting in the sprightliness and sureness 
of the dialogue. To this play, it would seem, he had given more 
than his usual attention, for he lias told us that 

""Lest by others stealth it be imprest 
Without my passport, patch'd by otlier's wit,' 

he had given it to the press himself. But while it cannot be de- 
nied that in All Fools C'hapman has shown a fund of real humor 
aiid a competent mastery of comic situation, his usual practice 
both in tragedy and in comedy proves him to have been deficient 
in dramatic sense, and to have been neither versatile nor prolific. 
Scholarly by nature, and coming late to the stage, he was never 
able to gain the skill, nor develo]i the easy grace and sweet human- 
ity whicli we find so delightful, for instance, in the les< ambitious 
Shirley. 

jSTotvvithstanding the inequalities in Cliapman's comedies, liis 
dramatic affiliations are fairly clear. He belonged to the classical 
school as opposed to the comic practice of the more popular ro- 
mantic playwrights. He did not commit himself definitely to a 
propaganda, as Jonson did; but he was closely related to the lat- 
ter both professionally and by temperament. He l)elieved with 
Jonson that the end of art is moral,^ and, as a rule, he main- 
tained in his comedies the structural principles of Roman comedy. 
But while Chapman kept on the whole to the comedy of intrigue, 
and introduced into his plays the stock characters of the Latin 

^Poems and Minor Translations, "Introduction," pp. xxv-xxvi. 

''Ibid., p. xxvi. 

'Dedication to Revenge of Bussy D'Amhois. 



32 Shirlei/'s Comedies of London Life 

writers, his classic form was by no means pure. Romantic ele- 
ments crept in, possibly under the influence of the Italian novels 
and plays that sensed as the sources of some of his material. 
Monsieur D'Olive has a strong romantic tinge, and the same is 
true of certain scenes in The Widow's Tears. In The Gen^.^eman 
Usher, the romantic plot so completely usurps the interest that' it 
has been taken as a possible experiment of Chapman's in Fletcher- 
ian comedy.^ We might expect an irregular production from an 
author whose career extended over so long a period as Chapman's 
did. But Chapman's difficulties proljably arose from other sources. 
It is easier to believe that he failed to develop a more settled and 
perfect manner through the fact that he began late and that his 
true talents l^y in other fields. In this respect it is interesting 
to compare him with Jonson. The professional careers of the two 
men run parallel, with apparently the same opportunities. While 
Chapman was in the field with the classic model, and even with its 
specialized form of the humors, as early as Jonson. he never 
brought his practice to critical perfection, and hence relinquished 
any possible leadership in the classical school to his sturdy and 
more able contemporary. 

Before entering into an examination of Chapman's comedies, I 
wish to eliminate from the discussion one that would seem to con- 
tribute little to a fair estimation of his general practice. This is 
the play of The Gentleman Usher. It is a new departure for 
Chaiiman into tragi-comedy, Imt so l)ungling and purposeless that 
it can hardly be considered more than an experiment. The ])lay 
is full of dramatic possibilities; but the poet has missed them all, 
and after starting in light comedy gropes his way into serious 
drama. In the six remaining comedies, however, certain common 
characteristics are so well defined as to give a more or less fixed 
caste to his work. At first sight, these plays have a very complex 
character; and the complexity is real in the plots and counter-plots 
of such plays as AH Fools and May Dni/. But the intricacy of the 
intrigue excepted, the general plan of construction of the plays is 
comparatively simple. There are generally two or three charac- 
ters whose vices or virtues the dramatist wishes to exploit. To 
carry out this plan, there is a third character, a "dynamic person- 

'Parrott, ed. All Fools. Belles-Lettres Ser., p. xlv. 



George Chapman 33 

alitv," whose business is to set all of the rest by the ears. The 
remaining characters nierel}- furnish additional humorous touches, 
and are incidental to the main action. Another principle of con- 
struction is a parallelism in the action, often resulting in, or em- 
phasized by, the contrast in the leading characters. A Huntoroits 
Day's Mirth consists of a series of tricks played upon a jealous old 
husband and a doting old wife. Lemot, the king's minion, car- 
ries on the action. In All Fools the same form prevails. Two 
fathers are played one against the other by the disreputable Ee- 
naldo. Monsieur D'Olive, while quite different in tone and treat- 
ment from the plays just mentioned, has, nevertheless, the same 
arrangement. The chivalrous Vandome, returning home after 
some years of absence, finds woe and mourning on all sides. To 
him the following problem is presented for solution. Marcellina, 
to whom he is bound in ties of gallantry, has secluded herself on 
account of the jealousy of her husband, and vowed never to leave 
her curious retirement. On the other hand, Vandome's sister has 
died, and her husband, St. Anne, inconsolable in his grief, refuses 
to consign the body to the grave. The parallelism is very clearly 
marked here. Marcellina and St. Anne have, so to speak, been 
deflected from their usual course of life. To restore them to their 
normaj orbit is the object of the action, and Yandome becomes the 
moving personality. The Widoiv's Tears, the last of C*hapman's 
comedies, is a striking and daring play, yet unsatisfactory by very 
nature.^ Eudora, a widow, and Cynthia have jirofessed a fidelity 
to their husbands that shall outlast death. Thersalio l)reaks the 
vowed constancy of the former by winning her to a second mar- 
riage ; while his brother, husband to Cynthia, tests the fidelitv of 
the latter in a scene that runs a very narrow way between farce 
and tragedy. The parallelism is no less marked here than in the 
other plays just mentioned. Thersalio is the one who propels the 
play in this case. 

Besides simplicity and a common constructive principle, the 
comedies of Chapman have similar comic themes or motifs. To 
this may be attached more than ordinary importance when we 
come to consider his collaboration with another author. Either 

^I have omitted May Dai/, which seems in construction nearer to his 
early work in The Blind Becigar of Alexandria, before he had reached his 
more settled form. Cf. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, T. p. 57. 



34 i^hirleij's Comedies of London Life 

Chapman's stock of comic material was especially limited, or he 
liatl a peculiar interest in using again and again the same theme. 
He never tired of recurring to tlie incontinence of women, and its 
complementary motif of the jealous hushand, to whom "suspicion 
is the deepest wisdom." In The Blind Beggar of Alexandria 
the unpleasant series of adulteries practiced hy the hero would 
seem to involve a real indictment of women. But this must not 
l)e too hastily accepted as Chapman's attitude toward the sex. In 
.1 Iluinnwus Day's Mirth, the old husband is at once the victim 
of his too great jealousy and liis doting belief in his wife's con- 
stancy. In All Fools the jealous husband theme forms the in- 
terest of the sub-plot, and it appears as a contributory cause of 
tlie complication in Monsieur D'Olive. In the "unchivalrous 
tomedy" of The ]yidow's Tears, Chapman's version of the Ephesian 
Matron, tlie constancy of women receives an apparent, if not an 
intended, attack. The question at once arises, Wliat was Chap- 
man's attitude toward the opposite sex? Swinburne in discussing 
this comedy has suggested that "a speculative commentator might 
tlirow out some conjecture to the effect that the poet at fifty-three 
may have been bent on revenge for a slight offered to some un- 
seasonable courtship of his own"; and we might inquire whether 
•'this keen onslaught on the pretensions of the whol^ sex to. con- 
tinence or constancy were or were not instigated by an individual 
rancour." Apparently Swinburne is not looking for a serious an- 
swer. To be sure, the passages upon women in most of Chap- 
man's plays are not complimentary;^ and his constant return to a 
tlieme so offensive to our present moral conceptions would seem to 
indicate a cynical attitude upon Chapman's part. But on the 
other hand, we have the fine scene betM^een Vincentio and Margaret 
in The Gpntleman Usher ;^ the pretty defense of Gazetta by the 
])age in All Fools r^ tlie romantic devotion of St. Anne in Monsieur 
D'Olive: while the incontinence of the Puritan in A Humorous 
Day's Mirth and Franceschina in May Day is not so much the sin 
at question as the jealousy of old Labervele and the unseasonabl& 
amour of Lorenzo. As to the moral jihase of tlie matter, it has 

\See AU Fools. Gostanzo's advicf to Cornelio, Act V, Se. 2. "N;iy, 
Cornelio, I tell you again." etc. Paiintt edition, Lond., 1014. 
^\ct IV, Sc. 2. 
=Act III, Sc. 1. 



George Chapman SS' 

already been considered above. It should be remembered, how- 
ever, that Chapman is giving a comic view of life, in a comic form 
that is highly conventional and equally opposed to any idealistic 
or realistic interpretation. 

Professor Schelling, commenting upon Chapman, has said that 
he "never passed much beyond the intrigue of Terence and Plau- 
tus, the vivacious repartee of Lyly, and the more wayward 'humors' 
of his friend Jonson."^ Of character study in the real sense of a 
living comic personality he has given us nothing. Monsieur 
D'Olive, Thersalio, and perhaps Bassiolo, are the only characters 
that we would remember individually for their humor. In read- 
ing his comedies, we are constantly referring to the dramatis per- 
sonae to keep the characters straight in our minds. This lack of 
vital characterization is a criticism commonly lodged against Ben^ 
Jonson, but can be more Justly urged against his fellow artist. 
Chapman. It is the loss that comes from presenting character 
as it is rather than as it is becoming. The Latin method presup- 
poses this neglect of development in character when it relies upon- 
incident and intrigue for its comic effects. The art of Chapman' 
and Jonson differs in this respect from that of Shakespeare.^ 
Their method does not consist in throwing a humorous light over 
a more or less serious central theme, or l)y introducing the comic 
effects episodically by the means of comic personality. There is- 
no serious story at the bottom of the plays most characteristic of 
Chapman's work in comedy. The one play in which he attempted 
a combination of serious and comic elements is a lamentable fail- 
ure, proving completely beyond his control as a dramatic artist. 
While there is adequate evidence of observation of life and a real 
sense of humor, the bun) or does not spring from comic person- 
ality, but lies in cleverly contrived situations animated by the- 
comic s])irit of dilemma and surprise. That results of a high 
artistic level cannot be obtained from this method is abundantly 
refuted by the great works of Jonson. But Chapman, while at- 
tempting a similar form, is, compared with his contemporary,, 
greatly restricted in inventiveness, observation, and in vital ancf 
vigorous technique. While his plays are amusing and original,. 

^Elizaheihan Drama, I, p. 4G4. 

-Woodbridge, Studies in Jonson's Comedy, pp. 40-41. 



36 SJiirlei/'s Comedies of London Life 

they belong to a thoroughly intellectual order that relies for its 
effects upon the development of situations and intrigue, rather 
than upon the development of character. His plots have little con- 
nection with real life, and the thoroughly conventional nature of 
his art is implied in the removal of the scene to a land the only 
clue to which is given in the names of the characters. Beyond 
Monsieur D'Olive, Chapman has given us little in the way of 
comic character. Little, I say, if we are to take sucli a creation 
as Falstaff as the measure of high comic art. For there is never 
a pervading sense of humor in his characters ; never a spontaneity 
suggested in the scenes that would lead one to believe that they 
were ever otherwise than contrived for the point. Chapman's 
portraj^al of character is objective in distinction to the subjective 
realization by an author of another personality. In a word, Chap- 
man is limited in his treatment of character by a comic point of 
view that is intellectual ratlier than sympathetic and intimate: 
and the Latin method which, he adopted in harmony with his 
peculiar attitude prescribed anything but a conventionai treatment 
of comic personality. 

It has been said above that Chapman was not without a keen 
observation of life. Highly conventional as his art was, he found 
tlie basis of his character-portrayal in the life he saw about 
him. Though the scene may be laid in France or Italy, the char- 
acters are the old familiar figures of the London citizen and court- 
ier. It is evidenet from his plays that his observation has fallen 
largely among the middle classees; and it is doubtful from his come- 
dies whether Chapman really knew in an intimate sense the strictly 
fashionable and exclusive circles of the London of his times. He 
is at his best when dealing with the citizen class, as in A II Fools, 
A Humorous Day's Mirth, and Maj/ Dai/. Though high-sounding 
names and even titles of honor arc given to the characters in these 
plays, they are distinctly burgeois. Count Labervele in A 
Humorous Day's Mirth is nothing but a .variation of Cornelio in 
.4// Fools, and both of them find their protot3']>e in Old Security 
in the purely realistic comedy of Eastward Hoe. The courtier 
when introduced is generally some "thirty-pound" knight, more 
Or less disreputable and impecunious. The gulling of the citizen 
by this class, and the demoralizing influence of the court upon the 
citizen is a frequent theme in Chapman's comedies. It must be 



George Chapman 37 

recopTiized that the Ijest society in James's reign was neither very 
moral nor very refined; bnt it cannot fail to be as easily recog- 
nized that nowhere in the comdies most characteristic of Chap- 
man's hand can we feel that we are above the snbstantial mer- 
chant class. 

In brief summary of his comic ])ractice, we find that Chapman 
used the Latin form, deriving mnch of his material from Itali'an 
novels and comedies of intrigue.^ This was all in harmony with 
his intellectual conception of the comic spirit and his intimate 
acquaintance with classical literary art. In point of dramatic 
construction he is frequently weak. It seemed dif!icult for him 
to sustain an action through five acts with any of the interest that 
we are led to expect in the beginning. 'Monsieur D'OUve is ad- 
mirably opened as a play, but comes to an end very aimlessly ; and 
it is not infrequent that Chapman gets lost in the maze of his com- 
plication, as in A Humorous Day's Mirth. While inventive and re- 
sourceful in many instances, he is generally limited both in the 
plan of his plots and in comic situation. His plays are frequently 
built upon parallel lines of action and contrast, and he seems 
never to tire of certain stock themes, as the gulling of a Jealous 
husband and the corrupting influence of the court upon citizen 
life. His limitations are adequately marked in his play of Tlie 
Gentleman Usher, where he made a bungling attempt at romantic 
comedy. From his theories of dramatic art and his own intel- 
lectual and removed point of view, one would expect little in the 
Avay of enduring character drawing. Xot only is he restricted in 
the field of his observation, but his scholarly and thoughtful mood 
makes anything in the highest sense of comic character impossible 
for him. His mind, from its natural bent and training, could 
hardly have been otherwise than "judicial''; and comedy, much 
more than tragedy, requires the detached point of view, a com- 
prehensive sympathy of insight and delineation. 

From the foregoing examination of Cliapman's traits as a 
writer of comedy, certain conclusions are clear. He does not 
seem to have had the easy fecundity tliat is a distinguishing trait 
of the earlier Elizabethan dramatists. And whether from con- 
scious purpose or the want of a ready adaptability, he was not 

'Schelling, Elizahethan Drama, I, p. 459. 



38 Shirley's Comedies uf London Life 

successful in catching the demands of a rapidly changing public 
taste. Un the other hand, he did not attain to an established 
type of comedy peculiarly his own, notwithstanding he had col- 
lal:)orated with Jonson, the one man of the period whom he most 
resembled in talents and temperament, and who brought to artistic 
perfection a form of comedy to which Chapman seemed generally 
inclined. Such plays as Easlirard Ho, and possibly T]^e Bail, in 
which he may have served as joint author, would seem to indicate 
that he submitted to the guidance of his collaborators, if his share 
possibly did not consist merely in the suggestion of incident and 
other plot material. x\s an independent Avriter of comedy. Chap- 
man's gifts were few; although we should not forget, in conclud- 
ing, such an exceptional play as All Fools, which in point of style, 
unity of design, bright and witty invention, has been surpassed 
only Ijy the greatest work of the period. 



THE PLAY CALLED '"THE BALL." 



On Xovember IS', 1032, the following entry was made in the 
office-book of Sir Henry Herbert: "In the play of The Ball, 
written by Sherlev, and acted by the Queens player?, ther were 
divers personated so naturally, both of lords and others of the 
court, that I took it ill, and would have forbidden the play, but 
that Biston [Christopher Beeston | promiste many things which I 
found faulte withall should be left out, and that he would not suf- 
fer it to be done by the poett any more, who deserves to be 
punisht ; and the first that offends in this kind, of poets or play- 
ers, shall ])e sure of publique punishment."^ The plav was not 
printed until 1639, when it appeared in quarto with the following 
title-page : "The Ball / A / Comedy, / As it was presented by 
her / Majesties Servants, at the private / House in Drury Lane. / 
Written by George Chapman and James Shirly. / London, / 
Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Andrew Crooke, / and William Cooke, 
1639." The notice by Herbert, the title-page, and a slight men- 
tion of the play in Shirley's Lady of Pleasure, constitute the only 
facts of contemporary evidence that I have been able to find in 
reference to The Ball. As the relative merits of the play in re- 
gard to Shirley's other comedies of London life have been suifici- 
ently considered, the present discussion will center about ques- 
tions arising within the play itself. The establishing of an au- 
thoritative text is simplified by the fact that there is only one 
early quarto, and the first well-known reprint- was not made until 
LS33, when it appeared in the complete works of Shirley edited 
by Gifford and Dyce. While any question of an authentic text is 
thus eliminated, there remains the eorrujitly printed quarto, which 
has bafflied not only the patience, l)ut the ingenuity, of the inde- 
fatigable Gifford. From the character of the text, the title-i)agc ol' 
the original copy, and the external notices of the play, several very 
interesting questions arise. The corruption of the printed quarto 
of 1639, and the lack of a dedication, suggest that Shirley did not 
supervise the printing of the play. Is it possible that Shirlev was 

']\Ialone by Boswell, III, pp. 231-232. 

-The play is reprinted in The Old Enfilish Drama. 182.5, Vol. 1. For 
ooinpletp list of r(])rints sp« r>il)lioorapliy. 



40 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

in Ireland at the time? The title-page raises the question of 
authorship, and is the only external evidence to support the claim 
of Chapman to a hand in the comedy. From the notice of the 
play in the memorandum of Sir Henry Herl^ert, and the imputa- 
tion of scandal in The Lady of Pleasure, our interest is aroused in 
the contemporary hearings of the play, and especially in the nature 
of the so-called "hall." Since these prohlems involve much that is 
interesting that would not suggest itself except in this particular 
connection, and coyer, as I see it, the historical interest of the 
play, I shall consider them in' the order given ahove. 

It was not Shirley's custom, or perhaps even his right, to puh- 
lish his plays immediately after they had heen 2)resented on the 
stage. The managers were as completely vested with all rights in 
the plays as they had heen in the days of Elizaheth.^ It hap- 
pened, then, that The Ball, which had been licensed in November, 
1G32, was not given to the press until 1639. In this year it ap- 
peared with two other plays, one of which was Chahot, also ascribed 
to Chapman and Shirley, Between the years 1637 and 1640, some 
eleven plays of Shirley had appeared in print;- all l)ut three from 
the same publishers, all without dedications, and many of them 
very corrupt in text. The lack of a dedication and any care for 
the integrity of the text has led Fleay to believe that Shirley was 
not in England during the years 1637 and 1640, and that these 
plays were not prepared by him for the press." After examining' 
the plays themselves, and considering the restrictions due to the 
plague at the time, and the change in the status of the various 
companies, I am inclined to accept Fleay's theory as at least 
probable. 

In the spring of 1636, the plague having l)roken out with un- 
usual violence, it was found necessary to prohibit large assemblies 
of people, and the theaters were consequently closed on May 
twelfth.* The restriction continued until the twenty-third of Feb- 
ruary, when "the bill of the plague made the numlier at forty 

'See Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, II. footnote, pp. 83, 91. 

-The Example, The Gamester, The Duke's Mistress, Chahot. The Ball, 
The Nightivalkcr, Love's Cruelty, The Coronation, Arcadia, St. Patrick,. 
The Constant Maid. 

^Biographical Chronical, II, pp. 235. 243. 

^Malone by Boswell, III, p. 239. 



The Ball 41 

fouie, iqwii Avhich decreaf<e the king gave the players their liberty, 
and they began the 2-1 February 163(5 [1636-7]."^ But this lib- 
erty lasted only for a few days, for Collier, quoting an entry in 
the Privy Council Eegister, tells us that the order of suppression 
was resumed on the first of March, " 'and playes, dancing on the 
ropes,' etc., were no longer allowed.'"- From Malone we learn that 
"the plague increasinge, the players lave still untile the 2 of October, 
when they had leave to play."'^ The public theaters had thus been 
closed with the exception of a few days from May, 1636, to Oc- 
tober, 1637. The King, however, kept the holidays at Hampton 
Court, and commanded the attendance of his own players.* Sir 
Henry Herhert gives a list of twelve plays given at Court during 
Christmas and Shrovetide. It is a significant fact that none of 
Shirley's plays are given in this list, and the Queen's men are not 
mentioned as having performed before the sovereign. The i^lay- 
ers at the Cockpit were idle in London, for there is no account 
of their having acted in the provinces." Shirley had always been 
popular at C*ourt, and it is highly prqbahle that if lie had been 
in London during this "long silence" of the stage, he and the 
Queen's men would have appeared at Court. It is certain that 
Shirley was in Ireland during the year and a half that the theaters 
were closed, and it would be entirely consistent with the facts as 
we have them to conclude that he had gone to Ireland shortly 
after the closing of the theaters in the spring of 1636. The 
Eoyal ]\faster was entered in the Stationers' Register for publi- 
cation on March 13, 1638. Tlie dedication was written, at latest, 
before October, 1637, when the restriction on the theaters was re- 
moved, and the long suppres^sion of plays, lasting a year and a 
half, was ended. The dedication is as follows : 

"It was my happiness, being a stranger in this kingdom, to kiss 
your lordship's hands, to which your nobleness, and mv own ambi- 
tion encouraged me; nor was it without justice to your name, to 
tender the first fruits of my observance to your lordsliip, whom 
this island acknowledgeth her first native ornament and top branch 

'Malone by Boswell, III, p. 239. 

-English Dramatic Poetry, II, p. 81. 

•''Malone by Boswell, III, p. 239. 

■"Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, II, p. 76. 

•'^Murray, English Dramatic Companies, 1, p. 267. 



42 SJiirlei/'s Comedies of London Life 

of honour. Be pleased now, my most honourable lord, since my 
affairs in England hasten my de23arture, and prevent my personal 
attendance, that something of me may be honoured to wait upon 
jou in my absence ; this poem ; 'tis new, and never yet personated ; 
but expected with the first, when the English stage shall be recov- 
ered from her long silence, and her now languishing scene changed 
into a welcome return of wits and men. And when, by tlie favour 
of the winds and sea, I salute my country again, I shall report a 
story of the Irish honour, and hokl myself not meanly fortunate 
to have been written and received," etc.^ 

From this dedication we learn that The Eoyal Master is the first 
of his plays that Shirley thought worthy of offering to a patron in 
Ireland; we also learn that tbe theaters are still closed, and that 
Shirley's affairs are calling him to England before the play has 
been presented. It cannot be said with certainty just when he 
went to England, but I can see no reason for disagreeing with 
Fleay's opinion that it was about the time when the restriction on 
plays was removed in February of 1637.- Upon amving in Eng- 
land, Shirley found that the plague had abated only temporarily, 
and, as there seemed no immediate prospect of the theaters being 
opened, b.e prepared the plays Hyde Park, The Yomig Admiral, 
and The Lady of Pleasure for the press.-'' I have only one criti- 
cism to make of Fleay in regard to his conjecture of Shirley's 
visit to Ireland, aud that is that be is, as usual, a little too dog- 
matic in his statements. He assumes, to begin with, that Shirley 
never gave a play to the press witbout a dedication, and wlu'u anv 
fact varies from this assumption, it is entirely rejected. The 
whole of this matter is involved in obscurity, and the best that 
we can do is to draw conclusions that do not violate the few facts 
that we have. Fleay was the first to make a careful examination 
of these facts, and his conclusions are in the main correct. When 
Shirley found that there w^as to be a long suppression of plays, 

""'111 1637 Shirley went to Ireland, under the patronage of George, Earl 
of Kildare, to whom he dedicated his Royal Master." Letter from Oc- 
tavius Gilchrist, in Wilson's History of the Merchant Taylor's School, 
Pt. II, p. 673. This is cited by Dyce as the probable date of Shirley's 
going to Ireland. (Shirley, Dramatic Works, I, p. xxxiv.) But what was 
'•Oilchrist's authority ? 

-Biographical Chronicle, II, p. 244. 

'These plays were entered in the Stationers' Register, IV, p. 355, April 
13, 1637, for A. Crooke and W. Cooke. All are dedicated. 



The Ball 43 

he left for Ireland. Whether he left The Royal Master in the 
hands of the puhlisher, or sent it over later, the fact remains that 
this play was not entered for publication in England until March 
13, 1638. We knoM^ from the title-page of the first copy that it 
had been acted in Ireland before the Lord Deputy in the castle, 
as well as at the Dublin Theater. It was licensed April 23, 1638, 
for performance in England, and was probably given by the 
Queen's men at Salisbury Court. ^ Shirley himself has told us in 
a prologue written for Ogilby's theater that he was at least two 
years in Ireland : 

"I'll tell you what a poet says; two year 
He has livM in Dublin" ;- 

but, as we do not know the exact date of this |)roIogue, it contrib- 
utes little as to the limits of Shirley's visit. Robert Hitchcock, 
writing on the Irish stage, says that "in 1638, three years after 
their commencement, they produced a new play, called the Royal 
Master, written by Shirley, an intmiate friend of the manager."^ 
It is possible that Hitchcock had recourse to some authority un- 
known to later scholarship, but it is more probable that he drew a 
hasty inference from the date on the printed title-page. 

Although we know that plays were given at the public theaters. 
Sir Henry Herbert, unfortunately, has only mentioned Massinger's 
King and i^uhject between October 3, 1637, and April 9, 1640.* 
It is quite certain that fiaint Patricl' for Ireland. The Constant 
Maid, The Politician, The Gentleman of Venice, and Eosania were 
all given in Ireland. The first two plays were not licensed, and 
were probably not reproduced in England. The Politician and 
The Gentleman of Venice were given by the Queen's men at Salis- 
bury Court, while the last-named play, Rosania, marks Shirley's 
return from Ireland, when he began writing for the King's men. 
His recent return is established in the prologue to The Imposture 
(which was licensed for the King's men November 10, 1640), 
where we read that "he has been stranger long to the English 

'See Collier, English Dramatic Poetry, III, p. 331 ; and Fleay, Biograph- 
ical Chronicle, II, p. 242. 

-Dramatic Works, VI, p. 493. 

'Hitchcock, Historical View of the Irish Stage, I, p. 12. 

*See Malone by Boswell, Til, p. 240. 



44 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

scene." There is continiimis evidence in The Royal Master, 
Bosania (published as The Doubtful Heir), and The Imposture 
to credit the theory that Shirley had resided in Ireland in the 
intei'val betwHen KiSG and IG LO. The Politirian and The Gentle- 
man of Venice, which we do not know to have been given in Ire- 
land, conld easily have been sent over to the Queen's men as Fleay 
implies;^ and when Ave add to these St. Patrick for Ireland and 
TJie Constant Maid, of the performance of which in England there 
is no mention, we are only crediting Shirley with an activity 
which would bear out tlie fecundity of his previous career. Dur- 
ing the time that Shirley was away, thirteen of his plays had been 
pul)lished, only two of which Ijore dedications. While I am not 
willing to go so far as Fleay and say that Shirley never published 
a play without a dedication, it is not prol)able that so large a num- 
ber would have issued from the press consecutively without dedica- 
tion, if Shirley had supervised the publication. Besides the corrupt 
text of several of these plays, which would corroborate this view, 
there is good reason to believe that during the years 1637, 1638, 
1639 the Queen's players had been selling Shirley's plays surrep- 
titiously to the publishers Cooke and Crooke. 

When Shirley first associated himself with the Cockpit theater, 
it was held to be inferior to the Blackfriars. In 1630, T. Carew 
(in some lines prefixed to Davenant's Just Italian, acted at the 
Blackfriars) puts the Cockpit on a par with the Red Bull. Two 
lines in F. Lenton's Young Gallant's Whirligig, 1629, would indi- 
cate that the performances at the Drury Lane house were inferior 
to those given by the King's men : 

"The C*ockpit heretofore would serve his wit, 
But now upon the Friars stage he'll sit." 

But Shirley gradually eliminated this disparity in the two houses, 
and from 1630 on we find the Queen's men playing often at 
Court, and even drawing compliments from the sovereign, who 
seems to have ke};t in close touch with the stage. ^ Shirley 
was called upon to write the masque given by the Inns of 

^Biographical Chronicle. II. p. 245. 

=Sir Henry Herbert notes in regard to The Gamester: "The King sayd 
it was the best play he had seen for seven years." Malone by Boswell, 
III, p. 236. 



The Ball 45 

Court in February, 1633, the most sumptuous theatrical perform- 
ance given during the two Stuart reigns; and by 1635 the Queen's 
men were scoring success upon success in the plays from the pen 
of their graceful and prolific poet. In May, 1636, the theaters- 
were closed on account of the plague, and after the final resump- 
tion of plays in October, 1637, the Queen's men do not seem to 
have maintained llieir former prestige. They play less often at 
Court,^ and are finally supplanted in their old stand in Drury 
Lane by a company of boys under the leadership of Beeston. Just 
what caused this loss of reputation it is hard to tell, but it may 
be ascribed to the hardships of the long period of closed houses 
and the loss of their popular poet, who had probably retired to 
Ireland. The King's men had been tided over by attendance at 
Court- and by the fact that they still held the services of Mas- 
singer. Malone gives an undated entry to the effect that "Mr. 
Beeston was commanded to make a company of boyes, and began to 
play at the Cockpitt with tliem the same day" ;'' and directly follow- 
ing this the entry : "I disposed of Perkins, Sumner, Sherlock and 
Turner, to Salisbury Court, and joynd them with the best of that 
company."' These boys are mentioned by Sir Henry Herbert as 
giving tlie plays Cupides Revenge, February 7, and Wit Without 
Money, February 14, 1636 [1636-7].* Collier has identified them 
with tlie company which, in the MS. office-book in the depart- 
ment of the Lord Chamberlain, is called on the tenth of IMay, 
1637, "the Xew Company."-"" The exact date for the transfer of 
the Queen's men to Salisbury Court is fixed by two plays, The 
Bride and The Antipodes. The former, a comedy by Thomas 
ISTabbes, was according to the title-page acted in the year 1638 at 
tlie Cockpit by "their Majestic Servants." The Antipodes, by 
Brome, was acted in 1638 by the Queen's men at Salisbury Court. 
It was evidently between these two plays that the transfer men- 
tioned by Herbert, when he joined Turner and the other Queen's 
men with the best of the company in Fleet Street, took place. 
Collier has quoted the following note at the end of the The Anti- 

'See Murray, English Dramatic Companies, I, pp. 177, 269. 

^Ibid., p. 168. 

%Ialone by Boswell, III, p. 240. 

*Ibid., p. 239. 

^English Dramatic Poetry, II, p. 78. 



46 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

podes: "Courteous Beader, you shall find in this hook more than 
was presented upon the stage, and left out of the presentation for 
superfluous length (as some of the players pretended) : I tliought 
good it should be inserted according to the allowed original, and 
as it was at first intended for the Cockpit stage, in the right of 
my most deserving friend, Mr. William Beeston,^ unto whom it 
properly appertained; and so I leave it to thy perusal, as it was 
generally applauded and well acted at Salisbury Court. "- 

When the Queen's Company gave up the Cockpit theater, the 
plays that had previously been given at that play-house evidently 
passed into the hands of William Beeston; for in August, 1639, 
the Lord Chamberlain issued an order establishing Beeston in his 
claims to the end that "any other company of actors, in or .about 
London, shall not presume to act any of them to the prejudice 
of him.''-'' In ihe list of plays given in this document there are 
many of Shirley's; and it is quite clear that in this break-up of 
the Queen's Company many of the plays belonging to the Cockpit 
had passed into the hands of the publishers. But surreptitious 
copies of plays had long before this found their way to the press. 
Collier notes that "the MS. in the office of the Lord Chamberlain 
under date of the 10th of June, 1637, contains an instrument, for 
which we have hitherto seen no precedent — agSiust the printing 
of plays, to the prejudice of the companies to whom they belonged, 
and by whom they had been bought from the authors. During 
the suspension of the stage in consequence of the numl)er of 
deaths, in order to gratify tlie theatrical avidity of the public, 
certain printers, who had surreptitiously got manuscript plays 
into their hands, began to print and publish them."* It is not 
an unwarranted inference that during the plague the Queen's men 
had been selling the plays belonging to the Cockpit theater; and 
when the company was reorganized with the best of the Salisbury 
Court men, it is highly probable that a number of plays again 
found their way into the hands of the publishers.^ In this con- 

'William Beeston succeeded his brother Christopher (father according 
to Fleay, London Stage, p. 348.) 

^English Dramatic Poetry, III, p. 332. 

^Ihid., II, p. 92. 

*Ihid., II, p. 82. 

*See Fleay. Biographical Chronicle, II, p. 243; also Murray, English 
Dramatic Companies, I, p. 169«. Printers were getting hold of plays dis- 



The Ball 47 

iioetion it becomes significant that of the thirteen pUiys of Shirley 
printed between October. 1637, and April, 1640, only two were 
dedicated by him. Of these two plays. The Boyal Master had been 
prepared by Shirley for the press, and was entered in the Station- 
ers' Register before it was licensed for the stage. It was prob- 
ably left in the publishers' hands when Shirley paid his flying 
visit to England in 1637. Of the other exception, The Maid's 
Revenge, we are not certain as to the circumstances.^ Many of 
the plays printed without dedications are corrupt in text; and two 
appeared under peculiar circumstances. Love's Cruelty was en- 
tered twice in the Stationers' Register, once on April 25, 1639, 
for Master Crooke and William Cooke,^ and later for John Wil- 
liams and Francis Egglesfield." TJie Coronation was published as 
by John Fletcher, but was later claimed by Shirley.* 

In view of the facts as stated above, the matter would seem to 
liave been as follows. During the long suppression of the theaters 
(from May, 1636, to October, 1637), plays belonging to various 
theaters were being surreptitiously printed. To such an extent 
had this been going on that the Lord Chamberlain issued an un- 
usual order to protect the various managers. After the resump- 
tion of plays in October, 1637, the Queen's men seem to have lost 
in prestige, and were finally in 1638 reorganized with the com- 
pany at Salisbury Court. A little later we find William Beeston 
protected by an order from tlie Lord Cliaml)cr]ain in his rights to 
the phiys which had fallen to him when lie became the manager of 
tlie company known as "Beeston- s Boys," and whicli would seem 
to indicate that there had been dispute as to the ownership of these 
plaj's due to the transfer of the Queen's Company to the house in 
Fleet Street. During this period and the following year, we have 
every reason to believe that Shirley was not in England ; and dur- 

lionestly ; that they should have procured them through the actors is the 
most plausible theory. Fleay, perhaps, goes too far in stating that the 
actors sold plays that they had picked up at special court perform- 
ances, and in otherwise amplifying his theory. But in the main points 
of his theory he is right. 

Tleay thinks that this play "being entered for W. Cooke only, had 
probably been in the publisher's hands since 1634, before A. Crooke joined 
him in these publications." Biographical Chronicle, II, p. 243. 

'Stationers' Register by Arber, IV, p. 438. 

^Ibid., p. 465. Nov. 29, 1639. 

*In a list of plays appended to The Cardinal, printed 1652. 



48 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

ing this time a number of his plays had appeared without dedica- 
tions and corrupt in text. It is further interesting to note that 
these plays, were, with one exception/ published by W. Cooke and 
A. Crooke, who do not appear as publishers to any other leading 
dramatist of the time. Of the plays above mentioned, one was 
later sold to another publisher, and one wrongly ascribed to 
Fletcher. With such facts before us, it would not seem a hasty 
conclusion to infer that during Shirley's absence in Ireland his 
plays had been appearing, without his supervision, from plaj'- 
house texts furnished by some of the actors; and we have good 
grounds for doubting the integrity of the title-pages of these plays 
where they are not supported by other contemporary evidence. 
Fleay is of the opinion that when Shirley returned to England 
and found what the Queen's men had been doing with his plays, 
he offered his services to the King's men. It seems to me more 
proljable that the loss of prestige by the Queen's Company, and 
the death of Massinger, leaving Shirley by far the most consider- 
able playwright of his time, would account more naturally for his 
accession to the more important post at the Blackfriars. 

x\mong the eleven plays of Shirley that issued from the press 
without the autlior's sanction or supervision, during the years 
1636 to 1640, were two bearing upon their title-pages the name 
of Chapman as well as that of Shirley. They were a comedy, The 
Ball, and a tragedy called Chabot, Admiral of France. The former 
is entered for license November 18, 1632, by Sir Henr\? Herbert 
as by Shirley:- and the latter, April 29, leSS.-"' The entry of 
these plays for publication reads as follows: "24. Octobris 1638. 
Master Crooke and William Cooke. Entred for their Copie vnder 
the hands of Master Wykes and Master Eothwell warden a Booke 
called Phillip Chalbott Admirall of Ffrance and the Ball, by 
James Shirley"** Here again there is no mention of Chapman 
as joint author. The title-pages of these two plays are the only 
external evidence of the collaboration of Shirley and Chapman; 

^The Arcadia, published by J. Williams and F. Egglesfeild. Stationers' 
Register, IV, p. 465. 

=Ma.lone by Boswell, III. p. 231 (November 16, on p. 232). 

^Ibid., p. 232. .Malone in this case has merely given the date of li- 
censing in a list of Shirley's plays registered by Sir Henry Herbert. 

*St<(tio)iers' Register by Arber, IV, p. 415. 



The Ball 49 

evidence that may be gravely suspected when we consider tlie cir- 
cumstances under which The Ball and Chahot were printed. 
Everything woukl seem to be against this "incongruous union" of 
Shirley and Chapman. In 1()32, Chapman was seventy-three years 
old, and had not been seen upon the stage in twenty years; while 
Shirley was one of the leading dramatists of the younger genera- 
tion, in the first flush of his genius and popularity. When the 
■Chahot was licensed in 1G35, Chapman had been dead over a year. 
The subject of authorship in both of these plays must be deter- 
mined b}^ internal evidence. The subject matter and st^'le of 
Chabot could suggest no other author than Chapman; and as the 
■question of Chapman's part in this play has been adequately 
treated in another place,^ it will be unnecessary to enter into it 
here. Criticism is unanimous in ascribing the play to Chapman. 
Mr. Lehman, in the monograph above referred to, says that "after 
a careful comparative study of Chapman's and Shirley's styles 
and methods I have reached the conclusion that the play was orig- 
inally written by Chapman and subsequently revised by Shirley. 
There is scarcely a page upon which the peculiarities of the 
former's style are not discernible. The principal of these peculi- 
arities are : involved sentences, tortuous thought, and the tendency 
to philosophize. On the other hand the evidence of revision is to 
be found in many places. The angular grammatical constructions 
are not so numerous as in the other plays of Chapman, the thought 
is somewhat clarified, and there is a greater degree of dramatic 
unity than is common in Chajnnan's plays." If the clianges 
named in the last sentence be ascribed to revision, it must have 
taken more than a hasty revision to accomplish the feat.- To 
smooth out angular grammatical constructions and to clarify the 
thought to any degree, would necessitate a laborious overhauling 
of the original play. But the revision of the play does not estab- 
lish a personal relation, and, as Chabot was licensed nearly a 
year after Chapman's death, we must look elsewhere for substan- 
tial facts. The Ball would seem to support the claim of collabora- 
tion in Chahot. But in this case the sole external proof rests in 
the title-page. Against this stands the entry in Sir Henry Her- 

^Lehman. Ptih. Univ. of Penn. PhiJoloqy and Literatvre. X, pp. 24-28. 
nbid.. p. 26. See also Fleay in Auglia. VTII. p. 408. 



50 >ShirIei/'s Comedies of London Life 

bert's office-book, which ascribes it to Shirley with no mention of 
joint authorship; and in his play, The Lady of Pleasure, Shirley 
makes a definite claim to this play as his own.^ The disparity 
in the age, character, and position of the two men would seem to 
offer radical opposition to any thought of collaboration. At the 
time of the licensing of The Ball, Chapman was a man of seventy- 
thiee years, who had outlived most of the men of his own genera- 
tion, a playwright who had not been seen in comedy in twenty 
yeais, the venerable outpost of the Elizabethan age, who had come 
in his last days to comparative neglect and obscurity. Scholarly 
and thoughtful in mood, he followed the classical tradition in his 
plays; and while a lofty dignity pervades his serious work and a 
pleasant ingenuity his comedy, he is seriously restricted both in 
the quantity and the quality of his work. In direct antithesis to 
all this stands the young and popular poet of the reign of Charles ; 
Shirley, a man of the world, but gentleuianly by very instinct; 
well-read, but not scholarly ; graceful and elegant in utterance ; 
prolific and versatile, turning with equal ease from tragedy to 
comedy, the pastoral, and the masque. 

While greatness of thought and a certain lofty morality char- 
acterizes the serious plays of Chapman, there is an evident rude- 
ness about many of his characters, a lack of fine polish which was 
not absent from the best societv of Elizabeth's and James's reigns. 
This, of course, is especially noticeable in his comedy. When we 
turn to Shirley's comedies of Eondon life, we are at once sensible 
of a change; we are among a class of people very different from 
those of whom Chapman wrote. Tf they are no sounder morally, 
they are better mannered; there is a marked refinement and ele- 
gance about them. This is all the historian Hallam found remark- 
able in Shirley's plays. "'The Ball, and also some more among the 
comedies of Shirley, are so far remarkable and worthy of being 
read, that they bear witness to a more polished elegance of man- 
ners, and a more free intercourse in the higher class, than we find 
in the comedies of the preceding reign. A queen from France, 
and that queen Henrietta Maria, was l)etter fitted to give this 
tone than Anne of Denmark."- Thp peojile whom we meet in 

''Dramatic Works, IV, p. 0. 

■Literary History of Europe, III, p. 331. 



The Ball 51 

The Ball, The Lady of Pleasure, and Hyde Park, are not the peo- 
ple among whom Chapman spent his active life. With the suc- 
cession of Charles to the throne and the coming of the French 
queen, there is perceptible among the better classes a distinct 
tendenc}' to greater refinement of feeling and manner. The sov- 
ereign, possessed of all the finer instincts of a gentleman, became 
the patron of poetry, painting, and music; while the Queen, fresh 
from the tutelage of Madame de Eambouillet, initiated that move- 
ment in England which had for its immediate aim the refinement 
of social intercourse. The Court was purged of much of the gross 
immorality that had stained the lives of many whom James had 
drawn about his person; and it is certain that any such moral- 
debauchery as was openly acted in the intrigue of Somerset and 
Lady Frances Howard would have been impossible under Charles. 
That there was much that was frivolous and silly in the pastimes 
of the better classes must be admitted ; and the precieuse move- 
ment, which the Queen introduced with good intent, soon showed 
its vain and dangerous side. But, as Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson ob- 
serves, "the nobility and courtiers who did not quite abandon their 
debaucheries, yet so reverenced the king as to retire into corners 
to practice them." 

But the point here is that it is not reasonable to believe that 
Chapman could have entered into the spirit of such a play as The 
Ball. N"ot only is its structure contrary to all of his practice, but 
the problem and people with which it deals are without the liounds 
of his immediate observation and sympathy. Jonson and Chap- 
man, linked together by the same tastes and training, seem, curi- 
ously enough, to have cast their observation among the lower and 
middle classes. The comedies of the former all have the coarse 
and homely quality of the people of whom they treat ; and while 
this quality is not so apparent in the work of Chapman, it is suffi- 
ciently predominant to warrant the assertion that he had not even 
associated or entered into sympathy with the fashionable society 
of the London of his day. I do not wish to detract from the 
worth of Jonson or Chapman. Both men were true ]>oets and 
eminently dignified and moral : but there is a lack in both of these 
men of the broader sympathy and finer elegance of worldlv cul- 
ture ; both want the nnl'ending grace of spirit that would tolerate 
a trivial subject in anything but a satirical light. Tn The Ball, 



53 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

a contemporary social jjastime is taken up and vindicated in its 
moral character in a light and conventional vein of conredy. The 
people with whom it deals are from among the courty circle, and 
of sufficient rank to warrant the censor in staying the play on ac- 
count of direct reference to them. In this play, dealing nat- 
urally and intimately with court society, full of local "hits" on 
the monopolies, theaters, and so forth, is it at all probable that 
Chapman, old and neglected, could have contributed anything of 
value? As we have seen, Chapman never produced a real comedy 
of London life. Not one of his comedies has London for its 
scene. To be sure, his knowledge of human nature is founded 
upon the life he saw about him; but he has cast it all in a con- 
ventional form, the comic interest of which does not rest in char- 
acter and local allusion, but wholly in trickery and incident. Xo 
one can read his comedies without being impressed with their 
similarity in spirit and structure. Eestricted as he was to the 
Latin comedy of intrigue during all of his active career, it does 
not seem probable that he would have seriously joined Shirley in 
the play of The Ball, so different in spirit and form from any- 
thing that he had done before. On the other hand, the play is 
just the thing that Shirley had been doing in Hyde Pari-, and 
went on to do infinitely better in The Ijad'y of Pleasure. A 
consideration of the play itself remains the last resort in the 
search for evidence to support tlie collaboration of the two men 
as given on the title-page. 

Gifford, the first editor to comment on this play, says of this 
joint product of Chapman and Shirley that "the largest portion of 
it seems to be from the pen of the former."^ As Gilford died be- 
fore the edition of 1833 was published, we are without anv ex- 
planation or reasons for this curious judgment. Dyce, who took 
up the work where Gifford had left it, says in his introduction to 
the published work "that The Ball was almost entirely the compo- 
sition of Shirley."- Baker says, "Chapman assisted Shirley in 
this comedy" f but he is probal)ly relying merely on the title-page. 
Swinburne in his essay on Chapman's Poetical and Dramatic 
Wor/,-.s says in regard to The Ball and Chabot : "These two plays 

'Shirley, Dramatic Works. Ill, p. 3. 

-Ibid., I, p. xix. 

^Biof/raphica Dramatica, II, p. 46. 



The Ball 53 

weie issued by the same printer in the same year for the same pub- 
lishers, both bearing the names of Chapman and Shirley linked to- 
gether in the bonds of a most incongruous union : but I know not 
if there be any further ground for belief in this singular associa- 
tion. The mere difference in age would make the rumour of a 
■collaboration between the eldest of the old English dramatists and 
the latest disciple of their school so improbable as to demand the 
corroboration of some trustworthier authority than a bookseller's 
title-page bearing date five years after the death of Chapman."^ 
Dr. Ward believes that "Chapman is a priori unlikely to have 
taken any share in the composition of comic scenes at so late a 
date as 1G32, and it cannot be supposed that those in question were 
written at an earlier date. If, as the title-page of the quarto as- 
serted, he gave assistance at all to Shirley in this play, it must 
have been of the slightest description."- Fleay accepts the theory 
of joint authorship, and is quite ready to replace the parts objected 
to by Sir Henry Herbert with passages of Chapman's writing, 
which he thinks are "easily traceable in IV. 3 and Y. 1, where 
Lionel, Stephen, and Loveall replace Travers, Lamount, and Rain- 
bow. In the Chapman part a comedy called Bartheme (read 
Bartleme) is mentioned as acted at the Bear Garden. Of course 
tliis is Bariholoinew Fair^ acted at the Hope, the rebuilt Paris 
Garden, in IGl-t."-" As the passages to which Fleay refers do not 
bear any marks of composition peculiar to Cliapman, it is hardly 
necessary to go so far in explaining the replacing of the names 
Travers, Lamount, and Rainbow l)y Lionel, Stephen, and Loveall. 
Gilford in despair over the text writes : "If it were not a mere 
loss of time to strive to account for the errors of a piece so 
%irsedly printed,' we might conjecture that Chapman and Shir- 
ley had not compared their list of characters.""^ Tlie matter is 
not so difficult to understand. We have good reason to believe 
tliat the text was surreptitiously obtained by the ])ul)lisbers, and 
})iinted without Shirley's supervision. We also know from Sir 

'Chapman. Worls: ^[inor Poems and Translations, p. xxxi. 

-English Dramatic Literature, III, p. 107. 

^Biographical Chronicle, II, p. 2.38. See Fleay's more iiefinite state 
ment, that The Ball was an old play of Chapman's rewritten by Shirley, 
in Anglia, VIII, p. 406. 

^Shirley, Dra,matic Works, III, p. 69». 



54 SJiirley's Comedies of London Life 

Henry Herbert that the play had been refused a license until cer- 
tain passages in reference to well-known lords and ladies had 
been amended. My conclusion is that the copy used for the quarto 
was a prompt-copy, in which the changes required by the office 
of the revels had been carelessly done. The corruption of the 
text of the quarto, which was not only imperfect in the original 
copy, l)ut wretchedly printed, would sustain this generalization. 
Cooke and Crooke had undoubtedly gained possession of the play 
through the hands of some of the actors. This explanation, it 
seems to me, remains more closely within the facts as we know 
them, and requires less of the conjectural. Tn regard to the pas- 
sage in which the mention of a comedy called Martheme occurs, 
Fleay is very careless in quoting the quarto.^ One might easily 
be led to think that the name of the comedy appeared in the text 
as Bartliemi, whereas tlie passage runs as follows: 

"Here I observed many remarkeable buildings, as the 
Universitie, which some call the Loure, where the 
Students made very much of me, and carried me 
To the Beare-garden, where I saw a play on the 
Bank-side, a very pretty Comedy call'd Martheme, 
In London.'" 

Gilford in a note on this word says that "unless this be a de- 
signed blunder for a tragedy on the Massacre of St. Bartheme (or 
Bartholomew), I can form no guess at the word."- Fleay, in- 
tent upon assigning this part of the play to Chapman, boldly as- 
serts that Martheme (which he spells Bartheme) refers to Bar- 
tholoniew Fair, acted as far back as 1614. But an early date for 
the passage is contradicted in the next speech of Freshwater, when 
he speaks of the women as the best actors, evidently referring to 
the French company which had appeared in London in 1629. I 
would suggest an entirely different emendation of the word Mar- 
theme, and joining it with the two folloM'ing words read Match 
Me in London, a play of Dekker's printed in 1631 as lately played 
at the Private House in Drur\' Lane.^ The misprint in this case 

Tleay got his reading from Gifford. 
-Shirley, Dramatic Works. TIT, p. 79. 
^See reprint of The Ball in Old English Drama, I, p. 84. Fleay had evi- 



The Ball 55 

Avould not be any worse than many otliers in the text; it is also 
more probable that a printer would mistake a letter within the 
word than at the beginning; and finally, the reading as given 
above is perfectly in harmony with the spirit of the passage, whicli 
relies for its humor on its flat absurdity. 

Considering the play as a whole, there is nothing in the hand- 
ling of the theme that would recall Chapman. Throughout his 
own comedies there is a constant recurrence of certain comic situ- 
ations which have become, so to speak, his stock in trade. It is 
not necessary that he should repeat these old themes in a work in 
which he had collaborated; but it is interesting to note that in 
the 2)1 ay of The Ball there is nothing that would suggest Chap- 
man's earlier comedies, while the theme of a rich young widow 
pursued by designing suitors is peculiarly in the manner of Shir- 
ley. It occurs in a very closely related form in The Lady of 
Pleasure where Celestina, followed by several needy gallants, man- 
ages to bestow her hand on the right man. The gulling of Bostock 
and his fellow suitors recalls the sub-plot of The Example, in 
which Jacinta leads her two lovers a merry chase. In the oath 
which the Lady Lucina demands of Colonel Winfield, there is a 
relation that Shirley is fond of establishing between a lady and 
her lover. The condition of Lucina's acceptance of Winfield is 
to a certain extent the moral regeneration of the latter. This 
theme is given a much more specific representation in the court- 
ship of Penelope by Fowler in The Witty Fair One ; and the main 
plot of The Example turns upon the moral regeneration of a man 
by the woman whom he is pursuing in an immoral way. In the 
y.ixxi of the play of The Ball involving Lady TJosamond and Lady 
Honoria, we have another mai'k of Shirley, who seems to liave pre- 
ferred to subordinate a less important action to the main plot in- 
stead of laying himself open to the danger of loss of unity by 
handling two equally important themes. 

However slight and conventional the play of The Ball may be, 
it is an admirable adaptation of Jonsonian comedy to actual con- 
temporary incident. The main interest of the play rests in the 
gulling by Lucina and her servant Scutilla of a group of trouble- 

dently not carefully pxamined this reprint, to which I am indebted for the 
reading above. 



56 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

some lovers, reminding one in a general way of the intrigue of 
Vol pone. There is, further, a simplicity and perspicuity of plot 
characteristic of later Elizabethan drama, and largely due to the 
criticism and practice of Jonson. All Fools excepted, Chapman 
nowhere shows either in tragedy or comedy that he had learned 
the art of clear and sustained plotting. Again in the characters 
of The Ball, one is strikingly reminded of Jonson, especially of 
Every Man In and Every Man Out of his Humour. Freshwater 
recalls Puntarvolo in Every Man Out, and Jonson in Every Man 
In calls Bobadill "Master Freshwater," a gibe at the latter^s not 
having crossed the sea, and hence not having seen real military 
service. Bostock and Barker would seem to have been fashioned 
on Stephen and Downright in Every Man In. Slight as these 
characters from The Ball are, in comparison with the more vigor- 
ous drawing of Jonson, I can think of but one instance in which 
Chapman has done as much, and that is in Monsieur D'OUve. 
Chapman, unlike the younger generation, never learned from the 
practice of his contemporaries, and is nowhere so successful in 
following Jonson in his humours as Shirley. If we stop to con- 
sider the eclectic character of The Ball, the sureness in adaptation 
of older methods, the unerring judgment that guided the treat- 
ment and spirit of this play, we cannot fail to note the peculiar 
marks of Shirley's art. Furthermore, there is a gaiety and cava- 
lier strain in certain of the scenes and characters that give the 
play a distinctly Caroline cast. And there is another fact that 
marks the period of the play: in The Ball, we have an interesting 
example of the allaying of a social scandal by means of comic 
treatment, a practice that could only grow up in an urban situa- 
tion plainly foreshadowing that of Pope's time, and pointing away 
from Elizabethan tradition, to which Chapman, notwithstanding 
his classical inclinations, properly belonged. 

Again, there is nothing in the style that would recall Chap- 
man. The dialogue is sprightly, without any tendency to ob- 
scurity in thought or structure, and runs along in a light, co- 
loquial vein. Although the text of the quarto is in the form 
of blank verse, it can hardly be read as such in many places. 
Tn the edition of 1(S33. the editors have changed several of the 
scenes to tlie natural form of ])rose ; and much that remains in- 
blank verpo is difficult to scan. The lines contain a varvins: num- 



The Ball 57 

ber of feet;, and there are frequent light endings; and while the 
movement is prevailingly iambic, much refuses to reduce to any 
verse foim. In faet^ most of the dialogue is nothing more than 
prose. In all of Chapman's work the verse is easily distinguish- 
able from the jjrose, and there are no signs of a disintegrating 
tendency. His work is, furthermore, not characterized by the 
lightness of touch, the intimate conversational quality that per- 
vades the dialogue in The Ball; a lightness and animation that 
leaves no opportunity for lapses into reflective or obscure thought. 
Before leaving the subject of the authorship of The Ball, it will 
be well to sum up briefly what has been found in this respect. 
There is no external evidence except the title-pages of Chahot and 
The Ball to prove any collaboration on the part of Chapman and 
Shirley. It is reasonable to hold that these plays were printed 
from pirated texts issued without the authors' supervision. The 
authority of the title-pages is to this extent discredited. Neither 
by the Master of the Kevels nor by the Stationers' Register is Chap- 
man mentioned as Joint author, while Shirley has definitely claimed 
The Ball in a later play. As this completes the external evidence, 
the theorv' of collaboration has little to sustain it, and is open to 
the gravest doubts. Upon examining the internal evidence, it be- 
comes apparent that it was as impossible for Shirley to have writ- 
ten Chahot as it was for Chapman to have written The Ball. 
Chahot is a play on contemporary French history, entirely in the 
manner of Chapman's other tragedies from the same source. It 
is, however, free from certain faults of Chapman's style, which 
would suggest a careful revision ; and we may assume that, having 
fallen in an imperfect condition into Shirley's hands, it was com- 
pleted by him, losing much of its original roughness in the pro- 
cess of revision. The Ball, on the other hand, is completely in 
the manner of Shirley. It is written in defense of a popular 
pastime, with an intmiate knowledge of courtly society, and filled 
with contemporary allusions to give it local color. It deals with a 
phase of social life with which Chapman in his fully authenticated 
work shows no evidence of ever having come in contact. We feel 
at once in this play that we are among a different sort of people 
from any we have met in the comedies of the previous reign. It 
would seem impossible for Chapman to have given Shirley the 
slightest aid in the composition of The Ball. But the complete 



58 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

mastery shown in the construction of the slight plot, together with 
the witty, conversational style of the dialogue, leaves no room to 
doubt to whom the play belongs. The authority of the title-page 
being questionable, and the remaining evidence, both external and 
internal, against collaboration, the conclusion is that there was no 
literary relation between Chapman and Shirley in the case of The 
Bail. This play is to be ascribed entirely to Shirley, while to his 
Tevision are due the smoother, more perspicuous verse form and 
the greater dramatic unity which in Chahot stand in marked con- 
trast to the work in Chapuian's other French tragedies. There 
remains the pleasing conjecture that Shirley and Chapman hav- 
ing fallen into an acquaintanceship, the younger man, then at the 
lieight of his popularity, came to the aid of the broken fortunes 
of his venerable fellow artist, first by linking their names on the 
title-page of The Ball, which was entirely his own work, and later 
by revising for the stage Chabot, in the writing of which CUiap- 
man had borne the major part of the work. 

The intrinsic merits of the play as drama and the important 
question of authorship apart, there remains a secondary, historical 
interest in the nature of the so-called "ball." It is interesting 
to note that the word hall as applied in the play affords the 
earliest record of its use as a substantive to denote a dancing 
party. ^ Gifford was inclined to l)elieve that the play took its 
name from the golden ball used in the masque at the end of the 
play;- but while it must l)e admitted lliat there is a punning 
reference to this device, I hardly think that it gave the play its 
name. The play would more properly seem to have taken its 
title from the social pastime which it attempted to free from cer- 
tain scandalous reports. The gilded ball whith is let down from 
above the stage in the opening of the masque, and which has a pretty 
reference to the amusement under consideration, is merely a device. 
In its presentation to the presiding beauty, it suggests an inter- 
esting analogy in the poetical drama of George Peele, The Ar- 
raignment of Paris, in which the golden ball, or apple, was laid in 
the lap of the Queen as a graceful mark of homage. Gifford says 

*See 'Sew English Dictionary. 

^Shirley, Dramatic Works, III, p. 3. That the name of the play is not 
taken from this device is indicated in the last two or three lines of the 
play. 



The Ball 59 

in regard to this play that "from some incidental notices which 
occur in our old dramas, it should seem that there really was, 
about this time, a party of ladies and gentlemen who met, in pri- 
vate, at stated periods for the purpose of amusing themselves with 
masques, dances, etc. Scandalous reports of improper conduct at 
these assemblies were in circulation, and evidently called forth this 
comedy, the object of which is to repel them."^ I have not been 
fortunate enough to find more than one reference to the ball out- 
side of Shirley's plays, but that one in an interesting connection. - 
We undoubtedly have in the ball the beginnings of the subscrip- 
tion dance, an institution that has since become an established 
form in the best British society. That it had but recently sprung 
into favor is indicated by the fact that whenever the ball is men- 
tioned by one outside of the particular coterie, it is always in a 
sense of novelty and strangeness. Lord Bornwell in The Ladij of 
Pleasure alludes -to it as "your meeting call'd the Ball,"" and 
Lady Lucina in the play itself remarks: 

"Some malice has corrupted your opinion 
Of what we call the Ball," 

to which Colonel Winfield replies, 

"Your dancing business?" 

The noun ball as applied to a dance appears in English print 
for the first time about 1633.* As the name of an assembly for 
the purposes of dancing the earliest record is probably Shirley's 
play called The Ball This play was licensed for the stage in 
November, 1632, but not given to the press until 1639. In the 
meantime, Shirley had produced his Lady of Pleasure, in which he 
again alludes to the "meetings called the Ball,'' and this work is- 
sued from the press in 1637. The verb meaning to dance is earlier 
in English. Richardson's Dictionary quotes Kndx's Historic of 
the Reformation of Eeligion in Scotland, of which the first edi- 

'Shirley, Dramatic Works, III, p. 3. 
-Davenant, Platonic Lovers, Act III, Sc. 1. 
^Shirley, Dramatic Works, IV, p. 9. 

^Vett? English Dictionary. "1633. H. Cogan Pinto's Voij. Ixxix. 321 
All of them tosethev * * * danced a Ball." 



60 SJiirley's Comedies of London Life 

tion was dated 1584. And long before, about 1300, the translator 
of the Cursor Mundi used the verb in the Middle English form 
bah {balm), from the Old French baler. There is little doubt 
that the word is of French origin, as there is every indication that 
the social pastime which it designates was also from that source, 
Shirley calls it 

"A device transported hither by some Ladies 
That affect Tenice."^ 

At this time French fashions w^ere in high favor, and French 
masters Avere especially sought out for instruction in dancing. It 
is a stock complaint of Shirley that his nation is famous for 
patronising foreigners in matters of art and fashion. 

"Why so, tis necessary, trust while you 
Live, the Frenchman with your legs, your 
Face with the Dutch. ''- 

As to the exact nature of the ball in the play, we find that it 
was a meeting at a private house, more or less exclusive, where 
ladies and gentlemen enjoyed a masque followed by a banquet and 
dance. It was a fashionable amusement, something, shall we say, 
of a fad, which by its novelty and exclusive nature had aroused 
the curiosity and suspicion of those not elected to the coterie. 
What more natural than that when men gathered at the ordinaries 
and news failed, — the Dutch had taken no fishing boats, and 
"coal-ships had landed safe at Newcastle," — they should fall to 
talking of the ball. Not knowing just what it was, and a little 
piqued that they had not been asked, it was a very human infer- 
ence that "strange words" were "bandied" and "strange revels" 
kept. Scandal once at work ,we finally get the sinister imputa- 
tion of Lord Bornwell that it was but the Family of Love trans- 
lated into more costly sin. Dr. Ward says: "The main pur-, 
pose of this comedy [The Ball] seems to have been to give the 
lie to the scandalous reports which had arisen in connexion with 
the first attempts at establishing Subscription Balls. How far 
these early efforts in support of what was to grow into one of the 



^See Dramatic Works, III, p. 74. 
-Ibid., p. 4.5. Quotations above fr 



•om the quarto. 



The Ball 01 

most respectable of British institutions had virtue on their side, 
it is perhaps impossible to ascertain.''^ i^t the time The Ball was 
written, Shirley saw fit to vindicate the amusement, perhaps under 
pressure brought to bear through the Office of the Revels by cer- 
tain fashionable people who had been too naturally personated in 
the play as it was originally written. Several years later in 1635, 
the poet alludes to the ball again in his Lady of Pleasure in what 
might be considered a less favorable light. Lord Bornwell says: 

"There was a Play on't, 
And had the poet not been bribed to a modest 
Expression of your antic gambols in't, 
Some darks had been discover'd, and the deeds too : 
In time he may repent, and make some blush, 
To see the second part danced on the stage."^ 

Had the ball really assumed an immoral aspect? And did 
Shirley intend a second play upon the subject? Fast conclusions 
cannot be drawn, l)ut it seems more than probable that Shirley is 
speaking impersonally through the character of Bornwell, ^\\o, not 
being a member of the "society" himself, and certain scandalous 
reports reaching his ears, had a right to warn his wife against a 
pastime which consumed not so much her purse as her fame. 

From Sir Henry Herbert we learn that certain lords and ladies 
had been personated so naturally in The Ball that he felt obliged 
to stay the piece until certain changes had been made.'' Confined 
as it was to Court circles, the ball probably had its origin in the 
general delight in dances and masques which the French queen 
had done so much to foster by her personal example. Henrietta 
Maria had also been instrumental in introducing from France the 
precieuse doctrine. The English Court had rudely offended her 
by its coarseness and vulgarity, and to remedy this she had re- 
course to the Platonic doctrine which had for its practical end 
the greater refinement of social intercourse. To the majority of 
the fashionable folk of the time the Platonic idea probably ap- 
pealed by its novelty, as a new toy to which royalty had given the 

^English Dramatic Literature. IIT, p. 107. 

-Dramaiic Works. IV, p. 9. 

^'Malone by Boswell, III, pp. 231-2.32. 



62 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

stamp of its approval. Only a few really appreciated the high 
ideal that was hack of it.- The doctrine was well known as early 
as 1639, for Jonson has given us a picture of a right Socratic 
lady in his play of The New Inn. By 1634 the movement was 
well under way, as is indicated by a letter of James Howell.^ 
Shirley, curiously enough, has not directly alluded to Platonic 
love in any of his plays on fashionable London life. There is a 
passage in Davenant's 'Platonic Lovers, however, in which there 
is a mention of the ball in connection with the new "sect" : 

"That's the platonic way; for so 
The balls, the banquets, chariot, canopy 
And quilted couch, which are the places where 
This new wise sect do meditate, are kept, 
Not at the lover's but the husband's charge. 
And is it fit ; for love makes him none, 
Though she be still of the society."- 

This passage becomes doubly significant when compared with 
another mention of the ball by Shirley : 

"Another game you have, which consumes more 
Your fame than purse; your revels in the night. 
Your meetings call'd the Bal/, to which repair, 
As to the court of pleasure, all your gallants. 
And ladies, thither bound by a subpoena 
Of Venus, and small Cupid's high displeasure; 
'Tis but the Family of Love translated 
Into more costly sin?"^ • 

Further on in this passage, it is confirmed that Lord Bornwell 
is not a member of the society, and his complaint to his lady is 
his objection to this social pastime to which he is not a factor, but 
which is kept at his charge. Lady Bornwell is an excellent ex- 
ample of the salon type, surrounded as she was by a throng of 
admirers who did not glorify her in verse, to be sure, but "amused 

^Familiar Letters, II, p. 31. 
-Platonic Lovers, Act III. Sc. 1. 
^Dramatic Works, TV, p. 9. 



llic Ball 03 

her busy idleness with precieux enfretiens d'amour."^ Such de- 
votees of fashion, as I have said above, cannot have taken the 
Platonic idea seriously. They were not conscious of any ideal. 
To them the ball offered the universal attractions of exclusiveness 
and novelty, and they seized upon it eagerly as something new to 
amuse them. Lady Frances Frampul in Jonson's A^ew Inn is per- 
haps a more exact literary counterpart of the actual types seen in 
Lady Carlisle and the Duchess of Newcastle. In this same play 
of The New Inn, in the Court of Love presided over by Prudence, 
Lovell is sworn upon Ovid's De Arte Aniandi.^ It is interesting 
to find in The Ball that Lucina wishing to bring a book upon 
which the Colonel may take his oath, the latter suggests, 

"Let it be Venm and Adonis then, 
Or Oi-ids wanton Elegies." 

But it must not be understood that Colonel Winfield is a con- 
vert to the new sect. It is to discredit his imputations that 
"strange words are bandied and strange revels" kept that Lady 
Lucina invites him to the ball. As we have seen in the play, the 
ball turns out to be, not a court of pleasure presided over by 
Cupid and Venus, as Lord Bornwell surmised, but Di^^'^a'*' 
province. 

"These are none of Yemis traine 

No sparke of this Lacivious fire, 

Dwells in their bosomes, no desire. 

But what doth fill Diana's breast. 

In their modest thoughts doe rest. 

Venus, this new festivalle, 

Shall be still Diana's Ball; 

A chaste meeting ever here. 

Seek thy votaries other where." 

I do not wish to push the suggestion to the point of absurdity, 
or to go into too great refinements ; but from the allusion in 
Davenant's play in which the ball is named as a place of resort of 

'See Fletcher, Journal of Comparative Literature, T, p. 133. 
=Act III, Sc. 2. 



64 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

the Platonic sect; from chance references which might indicate 
preciosity in the play of The Ball itself; and from the suggestion 
of the doctrine in the whole fabric of The Lady of Pleasure, there 
is good reason to believe that the so-called ball was tinged with 
p'ecieuse sentiment, if it did not have its beginnings in the very 
movement itself. It is not to be concluded that Shirley is in any 
way satirizing the "new religion in love," and for this reason his 
plays are all the more important as showing the extent to which 
this court fashion had permeated the fashionable society of the 
time. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 



TEXTS. 



Chapman, George : Woils, Mermaid Series, ed. Phelps, W. L., 
London, 1895. 

Chapman, George: WorJ/s: Plays, Cliatto and Windiis edi- 
tion, London, IST-i. (This work contains a reprint of The Ball.) 

Chapman, George: Works: Poems and Minor Translations, 
Chatto and Windus edition, London, 1875. 

Chapman, George: All Fools and The Gentleman Usher, ed. 
Parrott, T. M., Belles-Lettres Ser., Boston, 1907. 

Chapman, George: "The Tragedie of Chabot, Admiral of 
France, written by George Chapman and James Shirley, reprinted 
from the quarto of 1639," ed. Lehman, E., in Puhl. of University 
of Pennsylvania, X, Philadelphia, 1906. 

Chapman, George: Plays and Poems: The Comedies, ed. Par- 
rott, T. M., London, 1914. (Contains the latest reprint of The 
Ball, with explanatory notes.) 

Old English Drama, 2 vols., London, 1825. (Vol. 1 of this 
collection contains a reprint of The Ball.) (Harvard University 
Library. ) 

'f'SniRLEY, James: Dramatic Worl-s and Poems. With notes 
by Gifford, W., and additional notes by Dyce, A., 6 vols., London, 
1833. (The Ball reprinted in Vol. 3.) 

Shirley, James : . Worhs, Mermaid Series, ed. Grosse, E., 1888. 

Shirley, James: The Ball, a Comedy. Written hy George 
Chapman and James Shirley, London, 1639. (Original quarto, 
Univ. of Pennsylvania Library.) 

WORKS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL. 

Baker, D. E. iBiographia Dramatica, or a Companion to the 
Playhouse, 3 vols., Lond., 1812. 

CotJRTHOPE, W. J. : A History of English Poetry, 6 vols., New 
York and London, 1895-1910. 

Dessoff, a. : 'T'^eber englische, italienische und spanische 
Dramen," in Studien fUr vergleichende TAtteraturgeschichte, I, 
1901. 



66 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

Dyce, a.: "Some Account of Shirley and liis Writings," in 
Shirley. Dramatic Worls. I, pp. iii-lxvi. 

Farmer, E. : Essay on the Learning of Shakespeare, London, 
1821. 

Fleay, F. G. : "Annals of the Careers of James and Henry 
Shirley," Anglia, VIII, pp. 405-414, 1885. 

Fleay, F. G. : Biographical Chronical of the English Drama, 
1 559-1 rU2, 2 vols., London, 1891. 

Garnett, E., and Gosse, E. : English Literature, An Illus- 
trated Becord, 4 vols., London, 1903. 

GossE, E. : "James Shirley," Introduction to The Best Plays of 
Shirley, Mermaid Series, 1888. 

Hallam, H. : Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 4 
vols., ]N"ew York, 1863. 

KiXGSLEY, C. : Plays and Puritans, London, 1873. 

Koeppel, Emil : "Qnellenstudien zn den Dramen George 
Chapman's, Philip Massinger's nnd John Ford's,'' in Quellen- 
studien iind Forschungen zvr Spracli-und Culturgeschichte, no. 
82, Strasshurg, 1897. 

Lamb,' C. : Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, London, 
IS 54. 

Laxgbaine, G. : An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, 
Oxford, 1691. 

Life and Writings of James Shirley. Quarterly Eeview, XLIX, 
April, 1833. 

Lowell, J. E. : Old English Dramatists, Boston and Xew 
York, 1895. 

Xeilson, W. a. : "Ford and Shirley," in Cambridge History 
of English Literature, VI, pp. 213-235, New York, 1910. 

XrssEN, P.: James Shirley, ein Beitrag zur englischen Litera- 
turgeschichte, Hamburg 1901. 

Phillips, E. : Theatrum Poetarum, London, 1675. 

EiTTER, 0.: "Shirley's Amor und Tod," in Eng. Stud., 
XXXn, pp. 157-159, 1903. 

ScHELLiNO, F. E.: Elizabethan Drama, 155S-16J,2, 2- vols., 
Boston. 1908. 

Shakespeare, William : J821 Variorum.. The Plays and 
Poems of William Shakespeare, ivith the Corrections and Illustra- 
tions of Various Commentators: Comprehending a life of the Poet 



Bibliography 67 

O/nd an Enlarged History of the Stage by the late Edmond Malone, 
eel. J. Boswell, 21 vols.. London, 1821. 

/Shipper, J. : "James Shirlej' : Sein Leben und seine Werke/' 
in Wiener Beitrdge, band 36, p. 445. Wien, 1911. 

Stiefel, a. L. : "Die Nachahmung spanischer Komodien in 
England imter den ersten Stuarts," Bomandsche Forschvngen, 
V. 1890, pp. 193-220. 

Swinburne, A. C. : "James Shirley," in Fortnightly Beview, 
XLVII (n. s.), April, 1890. 

Thorndike, a. H. : Tragedy, pp. 230-234, Boston and New 
York, 1903. 

Ward. A. W. : "Shirley, James," in Diet, of Natl. Biogr., LII, 
1897. 

Ward, A. W. ; History of English Dramatic Literature, new 
ed., 3 vols., London, 1899. 

WiNSTANLEY, W. : Lires of the Most Famous Poets, London, 
1687. 

Wood, Anthony a: Athenae Oxonienses, ed. Bliss, III, pp. 
734-744. 1817. 

WooDBRiDGE, ELIZABETH: "Studies in Jonson's Comedy," in 
Yale Studies in English, Y, Boston, 1898. 

WORKS PERTAINING TO THE STAGE AND OTHERWISE HISTORICAL 

AiKEN, Lucy: Memoirs of the Court of King Charles the 
First, 2 vols., Lond., 1833. 

Arber, E. : Transcript of the Begisters of the Stationers' 
Company, 1551^16.1^0, 5vols., London, 1875-1894. 

Collier, J. P. : .1 History of English Dramatic Poetry, 3 vols., 
London, 1831. 

CoRYAT, T.': Crudities, 2 vols., Glasgow, 1905. 

Evelyn, J.: Diary, ed. hy Bray. 1890. 

Fleay, F. G.: .4 Chronical History of the Stage, 1559-16J^2, 
London, 1890. 

Fletcher. J. B. : "Precieuses at the Court of Charles I," in 
Journal of Comparative Literature, I, p- 125, 1903. 

Gardiner, S. E.: History of England, new ed., VII, 1904- 
1905. 



68 Shirley's Comedies of London Life 

Genest, J.: Some Account of the English Stage from the 
Restoration in 1060 to 18S0, 10 vols., Bath, 1832. 

GiLDERSLEEVE, VIRGINIA C. : "Government Regulation of the 
Elizabethan Drama/' Columbia University Studies in English, Ser. 
II., vol. iv, no. 1, Xew York, 1908. 

Green, J. E. : A Short History of the English People, illus- 
trated ed.. Ill, London, 1893. 

Hitchcock, E. : Historical View of the Irish Stage, 2 vols., 
Dublin, 1788-1794. (Mercantile Library, Phila., Pa.) 

Howell, J. : Familiar Letters, 3 vols., London, 1903. 

Hutchinson, Lucy: Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutch- 
inson, ed. by Child, H. (Dryden House Memoirs), 1904. 

MORYSON, Fynes : Itinerary, ed. Hughes, London, 1903. 

Murray, J. T. : English Dramatic Companies, 2 vols., Boston, 
1910. 

Pepys, S. : Diary, ed. by Wheatley, London, 1897-1899. 

Porter, Endymion : Life and Letters of Endymion Porter, 
London, 1897. 

Traill, H. D. : Social England, tV, New York and London, 
1895. 

Ward, A. W. : "Historical and Political Writings," in Cam- 
hridge History of English Literature, VII. See bibliography, pp. 
488-517. 

Wilson, H. B. : History of Merchant-Taylors' School, 2 vols., 
London, 1812-1814. (Columbia University Library, Xew York.) 



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